Very good paper from the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence showcasing the use of AI models for targeted persuasion campaigns on social media. The paper is split in interconnected 2 parts:
1)
Research focusing on real use cases of AI-Generated persuasion campaigns in the German and Russian languages (AI-generated text in less common languages has been more difficult to detect by current AI detection tools).
The use cases include politically oriented content in German, pro-Kremlin messages, conspiracy theories aiming to cause unrest, and disinformation.
2) (most interesting!)
A red team experiment that looks into an adversary’s potential decision making when it comes to crafting, coordinating and launching a precision persuasion campaign.
The researchers used AI models to:
Define the "right" target profiles based on topics of interest.
Identify their demonstrated sentiment & behavioral tendencies (based on a clustered analysis of their posts) on those topics of interest.
Perform psychometric, behavioral, and opinion-based analysis in order to segment those social media accounts into different groups.
The goal of this segmentation was to dig deeper into discovering certain traits about users that would be used in tailoring the targeting content in accordance with those psychometric characteristics.
Frame and phrase the message (the content) based on the user profile and the analysis performed in the previous steps, with the help of generative AI.
The results of the output - the "tailored" messages - are very interesting.
Keep in mind that this is the reality that we will be called to face in the near future. A higher scale of well-tailored information & influence campaigns that will not only come accross our own social media profiles, but also the ones of everyday people that may NOT possess the level of awareness that you potentially do, but still have a vote to cast on important topics.
In any case, this is a highly recommended read.
The annex includes some of the prompts along with other interesting details. Enjoy!
Link:
https://stratcomcoe.org/publications/ai-in-precision-persuasion-unveiling-tactics-and-risks-on-social-media/309