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Are AI Chatbots Spreading Misinformation to US Voters? (politico.com) 164

Posted by EditorDavid from the CheatGPT dept.
Are AI chatbots quietly shaping the perceptions of U.S. voters? Voters trying to educate themselves about candidates "are unknowingly being served partisan talking points in the guise of neutral news summaries," write two news researchers in Politico magazine: Leading AI chatbots cite partisan websites masquerading as independent local news outlets nearly half of the time when people ask about candidates and issues that the partisan sites have covered in the midterm campaign, according to a new audit by NewsGuard, an organization focused on news reliability where we work as analysts... NewsGuard prompted seven leading AI tools with queries based on recent coverage of candidates and issues by 12 pink slime sites — six left-leaning and six right-leaning. The results were stark. Collectively, the chatbots cited pink slime sites along with other sources in 48.2 percent of their responses.

In 7.7 percent of responses, pink slime sites were the only sources at all that were cited in chatbot responses, although other sources appeared in the source list provided at the end of the response.

None of the AI tools received results they'd probably be eager to boast about, though the percentage of chatbots' responses that cited a pink slime site had a relatively large range: 70.8 percent for OpenAI's ChatGPT, 54.2 percent for Microsoft's Copilot, 54.2 percent for Perplexity, 50 percent for Anthropic's Claude, 41.7 percent for Google's Gemini; 37.5 percent for Meta AI and 29.2 percent for xAI's Grok... The seven chatbots were also collectively three times more likely to cite left-leaning pink slime sites (cited in 36.3 percent of responses) than their right-leaning counterparts (cited in 11.9 percent of responses) — though that may have more to do with the progressive sites' far more frequent posting than any political bias from the chatbots.
"While citing the pink slime sites, only one chatbot response out of 168 total queries noted the partisan nature of the source," the article points out.

But they also note that the real problem seems to be that consumer-oriented AI chatbots just "use much of the internet's content — regardless of the reliability or standards of the source — to frame their answers."

Are AI Chatbots Spreading Misinformation to US Voters? More | Reply

Are AI Chatbots Spreading Misinformation to US Voters?

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  • Yes they do (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 ) on Monday September 28, 2026 @05:00AM (#66352880)

    all online "ai" operates under strict "neutrality" rules, which normalize all opinions on a subject without regard to whether there is any objective reality behind them. moreover, the opinions of the provider and the government are amplified, whereas anything else is downplayed.

    but if you expect a reality-based answer from a text generator whose training you know nothing about as the reality, perhaps you're the problem and should be disqualified from voting.

    • And I forgot to add: this is the "benign" default, before any manipulation that a paying customer has requested is applied to the output.

    • Re:Yes they do (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rendus ( 2430 ) <rendus@nosPaM.gmail.com> on Monday September 28, 2026 @05:11AM (#66352888)

      > all online "ai" operates under strict "neutrality" rules

      No, they do not. The rest of your message is closer to reasonable, but this is an absolutely absurd statement to make in any situation.

    • Yes, Grok absolutely operates under "strict neutrality rules" because the owner would NEVER manipulate anything to his own ideology ... ...

      Do you actually believe his horseshit? Are you really that daft?

      Do you believe this horseshit equally about Meta?

      Do you suffer from extreme myopic vision of easily observed reality?

      • Are you perhaps a "low IQ individual" who doesn't understand what the "scare quotes" around "neutrality" are for? Yes, you are.

        Half of the new slashdot is functionally illiterate and deaf to any modicum of irony, even in-your-face shit like using an antiphrasis.

        How did you manage to survive past 50?

  • Shorten the question. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rendus ( 2430 ) <rendus@nosPaM.gmail.com> on Monday September 28, 2026 @05:10AM (#66352886)

    "Are AI Chatbots Spreading Misinformation?" - Yes.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      One of those rare occasions when Betteridge is wrong.

      Musk has been quite open about this with Grok AI. When anyone discovers it going off message, he has his engineers "fix" it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tarlus ( 1000874 )

      Given the disclaimers on the face these chatbots not to believe everything they say, this whole question seems like a no-brainier.

  • this article is the absolute counterexample (Score:5, Insightful)

    by karlandtanya ( 601084 ) on Monday September 28, 2026 @05:13AM (#66352890)

    To Betteridge.
    Of course AI chatbots are spreading misinformation; that is their entire function.
    The reality isn't Terminator or Slaughterbots (yet); it's much more mundane.
    For those already in power, AI further concentrates that power by drowning out the discourse among the rest of us.
    It's not even necessary for the BS to be believed, only that all other conversations and analytical thought is interrupted.

    • This is why AI in the US is so hated. Next to slurping up jobs, its #1 perceived use that we see is disrupting communications, distorting news events, and changing the narrative. Basic stuff on a forum gets disrupted by trolls, or someone starts spewing the same bullshit rhetoric that has no base in truth, but is echoed in choruses, verbatim, drowning all chances of meaningful discourse, and driving people into creating ever more Discord servers.

      It used to be that one solid post on USENET was as good as

  • Water and wet (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Errol backfiring ( 1280012 ) on Monday September 28, 2026 @05:16AM (#66352894) Journal

    Sorry, we are still investigating the "is water wet?" question.

    Best regards,
    The Captain Obvious Research Institute

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

      Water isn't wet, water makes things wet. I don't know why anyone thinks this is a question.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kertaamo ( 16100 )

        Yes, water makes things wet. Water is a thing. Therefore water can make water wet.

        • Ooooooh I like it. Now we're in the weeds. Wet is being in contact with a liquid. What is water? Is it an individual molecule, or is it a fluid? If it is a fluid, can it touch itself just simply by being a mass or not? Is water segmentable, or is all liquid that contacts liquid now considered that liquid instead of considered to be in contact with that liquid? I.e. Can water be in contact with itself?

  • This is not a new thing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hyades1 ( 1149581 ) on Monday September 28, 2026 @05:53AM (#66352918)

    This is a bit of a twist on what's gone on in journalism for the last hundred years, but it isn't entirely a new invention.

    When I was a teenager and working for a small town weekly newspaper, the editor spelled it out for me: "If something arrives all nicely written in CP style, easy to cut from the bottom up, ready to drop into any unexpected hole you might have on a page, you should remember somebody paid good money to get it onto your desk".

  • Yes they are and you know who is pushing it ... (Score:3, Informative)

    by MxMatrix ( 1303567 ) on Monday September 28, 2026 @06:40AM (#66352946)

    ... because he is going to lose big in the midterms if he doesn't find a way to enforce martial law and cancel them.

  • > Are AI Chatbots Spreading Misinformation

    Yes.

  • The problem being that after 25% of people believe the garbage being spewed out, the rest of us are screwed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • Is that what porn sites are called now a days?

    • Re:WTF is a pink slime site? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Monday September 28, 2026 @09:01AM (#66353060) Homepage
      That was a new one for me too. My guess was what we used to refer to as "red tops" in the UK; the tabloid / gutter press because they typically have a red banner with the name of the paper on the front page, although some of the worst modern examples of that (the Mail & Express) actually don't have a red banner. In the mostly online world, that obviously needs to cover online-only and broadcast media forms too so "red top" seems to be falling out of use.

      Apparently though, it's actually a reference [wikipedia.org] to totally fake or low-quality news sites, masquerading as legitimate outlets purely to push misinformation and is named for the "Mystery Meat" by-product that resembles pink slime used as filler in some processed meats (mmm, yummy!) Defining characteristics include:
      • The content is generally produced by low-wage employees, automated content production (e.g. AI), and templates. It might just list information without any analysis or context.
      • Purport to cover local or hyperlocal news and to some extent are taking advantage of a decline in traditional local news.
      • Many outlets are part of networks financed by partisans to push their narrative or point-of-view.

      If you're thinking that mostly means the likes of Reach's portfolio of garbage and so-called "independent journalist" sites, take a look at the default Microsoft Edge homepage on MSN, which would totally qualify. It's clearly largely AI-generated, highly formulaic/template based, seldom provides any analysis or context, pretends to be local (because clickbait sites that include a country's name in them are *totally* relevant to another country entirely), and, yup, is financed by someone with a definite narrative to push. It clearly only exists to get people to doomscroll and generate clicks and ad-revenue. Bingo! Full house!

  • Are hammers hitting thumbs?

    Are cartons of expired milk invading refrigerators?

    Are cars double-parking themselves?

    Tools don't spontaneously act, like Aristotle's insects spontaneously forming from dust. Just because the person who set these tools didn't have the foresight or wisdom (or made the effort) to see where the tool would go does NOT mean the tools have independent agency.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by quenda ( 644621 )

      to see where the tool would go does NOT mean the tools have independent agency.

      And your lack of imagination or insight doesn't mean it isn't happening. Ultimately the answer depends of properly defining the question.
      Some people think the answer to "do we have free will" is difficult. But actually it is the question that is hard. Fix the question and define your terms, then the answer is relatively easy.
      The most common mistake is framing a question for free will, consciousness, sentience or agency as binary (yes/no). That is a stupid questi

  • Obviously they are, just like most other things on the internet. The internet is one huge misinformation war, why would chatbots be excluded? Especially since they've been trained on data scraped from the internet.

  • I asked my buddies ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, and grok and they all said they would never lie to me!

  • Is anyone really surprised if the chatbots trot out the misinformation that is available on the internet?

  • Yes, but... (Score:3)

    by Buchenskjoll ( 762354 ) on Monday September 28, 2026 @08:20AM (#66353034)
    American voters seem to thrive on misinformation.
  • Normally we just need candidates to spread misinformation.
  • And definitely not MSNBC whose coverage of politics is maybe 10% accurate.
  • But this is not an AI problem. Before chatbots were spreading shit and testing in IRC forums there were meat puppet accounts spreading misinformation. You know, old school propoganda.

    Getting people to do what's in the best interest of others is a morally bankrupt race...but it can be highly lucrative. So while we all get poorer ask who is getting richer...

    Please note that people that don't like to play by the rules are unlikely to change their ways if they succeed. This is why I'm voting for Trump for h

  • so what (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by diffract ( 7165501 )
    voting doesn't matter because you get Netenyahu anyway

  • Color me skeptical about this research.

  • You'll get results from fringe sites.

  • There's no way for AI to NOT pass misinformation. That's the crux of the problem. (And bo I do not believe in split infinitives)

  • Of course AI chatbots spout biased nonsense.

    So does every news show, every newspaper, every new site.

    Their job was never to report the Who, What, Why, When and Where. Their job is to make you do your masters' bidding.

    "If you read the papers, you're misinformed. If you don't read the papers, you're uniformed." --attr. Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain

    Pulitzer Prize is named for one of the two biggest liars in journalism in history, one that along with his competitor dragged us into the Spanish-American War.

    Al

  • Chatbots have been biased since I remember. You ask the right question, you get the opinion of someone who was in charge.

    I doubt you can trust even today's chatbots etc. to be 'unbiased', though in the current political landscape everyone thins what they disagree with is 'biased', neither genuine nor true.

    Such has been politics since Aristotle. Add in violence, and, well, some like von Clausewitz believe all politics is violence of some form. Which I write not to endorse physical violence in any form, but t

  • ... their otherwise impeccable accuracy record?

  • Yes, AI programmed by large corporations, are biased in favor of the company that build them.

    You use Gemini (made by Googled) it will favor Youtube (owned by Google) videos over other content.

    And yes, it will push the political beliefs of Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Sundar Pichai.

    They try to be subtle, but the bias is there if you look for it.

  • Also, the question seems to influence the answers quite a lot. Slashdotters probably know this, but people who don't know or keep in mind how an LLM works, will get a lot of bullshit out of them (as will anyone who knows that, but ar least he'll be sceptical, check sources and phrase questions the other way round and/or multiple times). I've noticed that since LLMs provide sources, that the fact that those exist is already "good enough" for a lot of gullible idiots. Although, in my experience, just as often

  • NewsGuard is propaganda too (Score:3)

    by Rujiel ( 1632063 ) on Monday September 28, 2026 @11:34AM (#66353362)

    The entire trend of "fact-checking" in media originated duriing Bush Jr. to rationalize invading Iraq, and it hasn't strayed far from its right-wing origins ever since. NewsGuard wants to hunt and peck low-hanging fruit so that it can "both-sides" away things like an active genocide. It is at one with the duplicitous nature of American MSM

  • I love how it assumes we all agree, despite political leaning or background, on exactly what the list of "pink slime" sites ought to include, and exclude, and what should be considered authoritative, non-partisan, factual news, and what should be considered partially/completely propaganda, and that the real problem is LLMs aren't tapping into this list when generating content for users. Give me a break.

  • Nothing new about peddling misinformation to voters. There's never been a moment in the history of democracy that hasn't happened, from all sides.

  • Yes. It's even slipping crap into my feed on faceplant, and I assure you, any *reasonable* algorithm wouldn't do that.

  • Chatbots are a powerful force for influencing opinion. They often present a reasonable-sounding chain of logic as if it were the only possibility. Often it's benign and more-or-less correct, but remember that these things are distilling the opinions of millions of Reddit users. It's best to treat it like a unscrupulous and narcissistic salesman and question everything.

    Of course, that's tiring to do constantly. It's so much more convenient to just do what the computer says. I wonder what would happen if we c

  • how could it not be. thats what they do.

  • We've had propaganda in various forms throughout human history, bots are simply the newest iteration of it.
    It targets the masses and those who are either too lazy or incapable of rational thought of their own.

    The question isn't about what current technology is being used to spread propaganda, it really should be why political parties, governments and the like feel they need to use propaganda to " win " or tilt the odds in their favor to begin with.

    Anyone who has to resort to the underhanded tactics of propa

  • This is one rare exception from Betteridge's law of headlines, the answer is YES.

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