Artificial Intelligence How can You Avoid Falling Victim to AI-Generated Fake News With These Simple Tips?

AI has created ripples in the journalism industry. AI News writing faces consistent challenges of fact-checking and authenticity. In a world where digital platforms are unleashing innovative journalism practices, AI-generated fake news is challenge readers and news writers must curb in due time. Disinformation and hoaxes with no real basis fall under the umbrella of fake news. 

Since AI has no human intention driving it, AI is more likely to generate fake news. But the good news is that humans can train AI news generators for fact-checking and resource backing to ensure news authenticity. In other words, where AI-generated fake news is a challenge, AI fake news detection is the possible solution to it.

What are the Types of Fake News?

Fake news and the quality of fake news are determined by a number of factors. Fake news has several forms and it is usually very hard to probe into further types of fake news than the ones known already. Usually, fake news is rapidly disseminated and leads to a number of baseless arguments among the readers.

Here are some types of fake news based on their nature:

Intended Forgery

Intended Forgery refers to hand-crafting a news piece based on personal opinions. This type of fake news has no realistic basis and it is only done to look similar to the intended realistic source. Moreover, it leads to the creation of false information which seems to be very similar to authentic news.

Biased Fact Selection

Face Selection takes out the context from the news piece and strikes out important details of the news. As a result, the background and news context is changed to align with a biased goal. Biased Fact selection changes or masks the real understanding of actual news. It leads to creating a false news impression.

Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy Theories are probably one of the most widely discussed and popular forms of fake news. These types of fake news stories portray some sort of clear guilt about something. Conspiracy theories usually tarnish the image of someone. Conspiracy theories are not at all based on real facts and they mute critical thinking among the readers.

Immoral Arguments

Immoral Arguments allude to the facade of free speech. Such arguments are beyond the ethical and moral boundaries and they are usually not based on actual facts. 

Media Manipulation

It is one of the most sensitive and widely used tools of spreading fake news. The preparators manipulate audio, video or any other media source to portray the desired perspective among the viewers. Media Manipulation is highly unethical and illegal. 

How to Detect AI-Generated Fake News?

Asking for more details about a news article is one of the easiest ways to detect fake news from real news. Fake news spreaders resort to different forms of lying and cheating to create and disseminate false information. However, social lying is quite difficult to master. 

Fake news contains false information and this information shall be consistent with a huge number of related facts. Unless fake news has detailed information, it fails to leave an impression of real news on readers.

Therefore, always ask or look for underlying information, evidence, more details and information supporting any news that you read. Fake news usually has lesser details and limited facts that do not align together.

Also read: AI Content Creation – Will it Replace Manual Content Writing?

Role of BOTS in AI-Generated Fake News

Over the past couple of years, bots have really damaged the credibility of news sources. These “fake news bots” are responsible for amplifying and spreading false information through automated accounts. 

Although most bots are static and most social media news platforms proactively ban bots, there is no solid way to eradicate bot-generated fake news entirely.

Malicious bots are specifically designed to persist through the bans. Their sole purpose is to spread harm, mislead readers, exploit information and manipulate news platforms. 

As a result, these bots disseminate spam, malware, fake news, rumours, slander and false information. They might just spread noise and there is only a limited number of precautions you can take against them.

Can AI Eradicate Fake News?

With so many uses of AI, one wonders whether artificial intelligence can help humans in eradicating AI-generated fake news. However, the challenge behind this is very tricky. 

Since AI is a machine and it does not have any self-interest or intentions, AI can not function like a human for fake news eradication. However, AI can certainly learn. Thus, like any other machine, AI can train to meet ethical human needs. 

AI fake news detection is only going to be as good as the data used to shape its responses. Therefore, it requires more attention on AI training for fake news detection.

Training AI For Detecting AI-Generated Fake News

The most probable way of training AI to detect fake news is to train it over a set of reputable news vs. a set of fake news. AI News Generators, similarly, will only produce more objective and real articles only if the human author feeds it with supporting details and correct information. 

The takeaway here is that AI news generators and AI fake news detectors are only as good as the data provided to them. They can only support news generation and detection. AI is no substitute for human intelligence and is nowhere close to doing so in the near future.

Robot Journalism is one of the recent terms where the authors use AI to generate news articles. But again, the main question is:

Can humans reflect and challenge their own opinion of others for correcting AI-generated fake news? Essentially, yes.

Thus, it all boils down to human conscience in the end.

Want to see how AI News Generator works?

Is AI-Generated Fake News a Threat to Real News?

Is AI more of a danger than a useful tool to detect fake news? The answer is no. 

AI is very powerful in scanning huge volumes of reputable facts and information. It is very accurate in detecting even the smallest of inconsistencies, which humans find hard to see, from a huge data pool. 

AI is an invaluable tool in the detection of AI-generated fake news, but it can not replace the human role in supervising the whole process. 

Techniques like Stylometry are useful in pattern recognition from linguistic data for assigning unknown text authorship to a specific person. Similarly, statistical methods like the Benford test are useful in detecting numeric forgeries to raise awareness for double-checking facts.

Humans can use such powerful techniques and their clever combinations to support AI in detecting fake news. 

It all comes down to how we, humans, support the role of AI in fake news detection.

Tips on How to Avoid Falling a Victim to AI-Generated Fake News

If you want to avoid falling victim to AI-generated fake news, there are some things you can do:

Check the Source

If you’re reading an article or blog post, check where it’s from. Is it a reputable news site? Does it have a disclaimer? Usually, AI-generated fake news does not have a real source. Even if there are sources under the fake news, you would quickly notice that the sources trace back to nowhere near authenticity.

Check the Author

If you can see who wrote the article, you can be in a better position to see whether the news is real or fake. See the author’s name and look them up on Google. See if the author has any other articles or blog posts online. Do they seem to be writing about similar topics? 

Check the Date of Publication

If you can find article publish date, you can trace the events linked to the news. You can do some research to see whether the news information has support from other, real sources or not.

Check for Unusual Language

AI-generated content often contains words that humans wouldn’t use in a particular context. While you are reading news and find something that sounds or looks off, immediately check the news for authenticity. News with unusual language is AI Generated fake news. Moreover, check for spelling mistakes and grammar errors.

Check the Context 

AI-generated content often loses context as you read on and dig deeper into the news story. If you are getting off track while reading news, you should see whether the news is AI-generated or not.

Check for Unusual Formatting

AI-generated content often has strange formatting which is normally not present in human-written content.

AI-Generated Fake News Are Easy to Avoid

The above tips on detecting AI-generated news are also helpful in detecting fake news overall from the news world. Apply these tips to filter authentic news only and stay updated with genuine information only!