As the general election campaign begins in earnest, we can expect disinformation attacks to target voters, especially in communities of color. This has happened before: In 2016, for example, Russia’s disinformation programs zeroed in on Black Americans, creating Instagram and Twitter accounts that masqueraded as Black voices and producing fake news websites such as blacktivist.info, blacktolive.org and blacksoul.us. Advances in technology will make these efforts harder to recognize.
In the past, producing false content in non-English languages required intensive work from humans and was often low in quality. Now, AI tools can create hard-to-track, in-language disinformation at lightning speed and without the vulnerabilities and scaling problems posed by human limitations. Despite this, much research on misinformation and disinformation concentrates on English-language uses.