[matus-pikuliak]

I have done some research about AI-disinformation. This is a really complex topic, as disinformation or influence operations are complex phenomena that can have many different forms. What I would argue is that disinformation in general do not have a supply problem (how to generate as much of them as possible) but a demand problem (how to get what is generated in front of some eyes). You don't really need a botnet of fake users pushing something, you need a few popular accounts/politicians to spread your message. There is no significant advantage in using AI there.

But, there are still situations where botnets would be useful. For example, spreading propaganda on social media during hot phases of various conflicts (R-U war, Israeli wars, Indo-Pakistani war) or doing short term influence operations before the elections. These cases need to be handled by social media platforms detecting nefarious activity by either humans or AI. So far they could half-ass it as it was pretty expensive to run human-based campaigns, but they will probably have to step up their game to handle relatively cheap AI campaigns that people will attempt to run.