Could ‘fake text’ be the next global political threat? | Technology | The Guardian

However, some feel that this overstates the threat of fake text. According to Yochai Benkler, co-head of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard, the most damaging instances of fake news are written by political extremists and trolls, and tend to be about controversial topics that “trigger deep-seated hatred”, like election fraud or immigration. While a system like GPT-2 can produce semi-coherent articles at scale, it is a long way from being able to replicate this type of psychological manipulation. “The simple ability to generate false text at scale is not likely to affect most forms of disinformation,” he told me.