AI and Disinformation: Approaches, Risks, Impacts, and Governance

Artificial intelligence (AI) plays a significant role in re-shaping today's information environment, and one way that AI is affecting the development of the contemporary information environment is in terms of its contribution to the production and propagation of disinformation. The influence of AI is not only about the ways through which disinformation is disseminated; the technologies of artificial intelligence also play a part in shaping the narrative around disinformation in our information ecology, thus having implications for public discourse, politics, journalism, and the interaction between citizens and governmental structures. As much as artificial intelligence makes information processes more efficient and allows for creative communicative solutions to be developed, AI-based tools bring certain challenges that involve issues of manipulation, opacity, loss of transparency, loss of trust in information infrastructure, and the undermining of the democratic process as a whole.

The aim of the Special Issue is to provide an interdisciplinary analysis of the role of AI in contemporary dynamics of disinformation. The first purpose of this Special Issue is to develop a conceptual and methodological foundation which will help to analyze the problem of AI-based disinformation from multiple perspectives. This includes technical aspects of generating false content, as well as socio-communicative and political consequences that such practices can have for both individuals and society at large. The second goal of the Special Issue is to identify and evaluate the risks and negative consequences of creating disinformation using AI technologies. This includes such problems as manipulation, lack of transparency, unequal distribution of disinformation, and deterioration of trust between different stakeholders in the process of communication.