Frontiers Ai Driven Disinformation Policy Recommendations For

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Dec 4, 2025, 8:54 PM

frontiers ai driven disinformation policy recommendations for

Your research is the real superpower - learn how we maximise its impact through our leading community journals The increasing integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into digital communication platforms has significantly transformed the landscape of information dissemination. Recent evidence indicates that AI-enabled tools, particularly generative models and engagement-optimization algorithms, play a central role in the production and amplification of disinformation. This phenomenon poses a direct challenge to democratic processes, as algorithmically amplified falsehoods systematically distort political information environments, erode public trust in institutions, and foster polarization - conditions that degrade democratic decision-making. The regulatory asymmetry between traditional media - historically subject to public oversight - and digital platforms exacerbates these vulnerabilities. This policy and practice review has three primary aims: (1) to document and analyze the role of AI in recent disinformation campaigns, (2) to assess the effectiveness and limitations of existing AI governance frameworks...

Drawing on qualitative analysis of case studies and regulatory trends, we argue for the urgent need to embed AI-specific oversight mechanisms within democratic governance systems. We recommend a multi-stakeholder approach involving platform accountability, enforceable regulatory harmonization across jurisdictions, and sustained civic education to foster digital literacy and cognitive resilience as defenses against malign information. Without such interventions, democratic processes risk becoming increasingly susceptible to manipulation, delegitimization, and systemic erosion. Keywords: AI; AI regulation; deepfake; disinformation; policy recommendation. Copyright © 2025 Romanishyn, Malytska and Goncharuk. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 November 2021 Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are playing an overarching role in the disinformation phenomenon our world is currently facing. Such systems boost the problem not only by increasing opportunities to create realistic AI-generated fake content, but also, and essentially, by facilitating the dissemination of disinformation to a targeted audience and at scale by... This situation entails multiple ethical and human rights concerns, in particular regarding human dignity, autonomy, democracy, and peace. In reaction, other AI systems are developed to detect and moderate disinformation online. Such systems do not escape from ethical and human rights concerns either, especially regarding freedom of expression and information.

Having originally started with ascending co-regulation, the European Union (EU) is now heading toward descending co-regulation of the phenomenon. In particular, the Digital Services Act proposal provides for transparency obligations and external audit for very large online platforms’ recommender systems and content moderation. While with this proposal, the Commission focusses on the regulation of content considered as problematic, the EU Parliament and the EU Council call for enhancing access to trustworthy content. In light of our study, we stress that the disinformation problem is mainly caused by the business model of the web that is based on advertising revenues, and that adapting this model would reduce... We also observe that while AI systems are inappropriate to moderate disinformation content online, and even to detect such content, they may be more appropriate to counter the manipulation of the digital ecosystem. This study aims at identifying the right approach to tackle the disinformation problem online with due consideration for ethical values, fundamental rights and freedoms, and democracy.

While moderating content as such and using AI systems to that end may be particularly problematic regarding freedom of expression and information, we recommend countering the malicious use of technologies online to manipulate individuals. As considering the main cause of the effective manipulation of individuals online is paramount, the business model of the web should be on the radar screen of public regulation more than content moderation. Furthermore, we do support a vibrant, independent, and pluralistic media landscape with investigative journalists following ethical rules. Manipulation of truth is a recurring phenomenon throughout history.Footnote 1 Damnatio memoriae, namely the attempted erasure of people from history, is an example of purposive distortion of reality that was already practiced in Ancient... Nevertheless, owing to the rapid advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) as well as their increasing pervasiveness, disingenuous information can now be produced easily and in a realistic format, and its dissemination to... The consequences are serious with far-reaching implications.

For instance, the media ecosystem has been leveraged to influence citizens’ opinion and voting decisions related to the 2016 US presidential electionFootnote 2 and the 2016 UK referendum on leaving the European Union (EU)... In Myanmar, Facebook has been a useful instrument for those seeking to spread hate against Rohingya Muslims (Human Rights Council, 2018, para 74).Footnote 3 In India, rumors on WhatsApp resulted in several murders (Dixit... In France, a virulent online campaign on social media against a professor ended up with him being murdered (Bindner and Gluck, Reference Bindner and Gluck2020). Conspiracy theories are currently prospering.Footnote 4 And presently in the context of the Covid-19, we are facing what has been called an infodemic Footnote 5 by the World Health Organization (WHO), with multiple adverse... As commonly understood, disinformation is false, inaccurate or misleading information that is shared with the intent to deceive the recipient,Footnote 6 as opposed to misinformation that refers to false, inaccurate, or misleading information that... Whereas new digital technology and social media have amplified the creation and spread of both mis- and disinformation, only disinformation has been considered by the EU institutions as a threat that must be tackled...

The disinformation problem is particular in the sense that, firstly, the shared information is intentionally deceptive to manipulate people and, secondly, for achieving his or her goal, its author takes benefit from the modern... For these reasons, our analysis stays on the beaten path, hence the title of this article referring solely to the disinformation problem. It is also worth specifying that unlike “fake news,” a term that has been used by politicians and their supporters to dismiss coverage that they find disagreeable, the disinformation problem encompasses various fabricated information... Your research is the real superpower - learn how we maximise its impact through our leading community journals Corresponding Author: Nikola Biller-Andorno biller-andorno@ibme.uzh.ch Received 2023 Oct 9; Revision requested 2024 Jan 13; Revised 2024 Jan 22; Accepted 2024 Jul 28; Collection date 2024.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIR... The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://www.ai.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included. Infodemics pose significant dangers to public health and to the societal fabric, as the spread of misinformation can have far-reaching consequences. While artificial intelligence (AI) systems have the potential to craft compelling and valuable information campaigns with positive repercussions for public health and democracy, concerns have arisen regarding the potential use of AI systems to... The consequences of this dual nature of AI, capable of both illuminating and obscuring the information landscape, are complex and multifaceted. We contend that the rapid integration of AI into society demands a comprehensive understanding of its ethical implications and the development of strategies to harness its potential for the greater good while mitigating harm.

Thus, in this paper we explore the ethical dimensions of AI’s role in information dissemination and impact on public health, arguing that potential strategies to deal with AI and disinformation encompass generating regulated and... Keywords: AI, bioethics, infodemic management, disinformation, artificial intelligence, ethics, ethical, infodemic, infodemics, public health, misinformation, information dissemination, information literacy

Frontiers Ai Driven Disinformation Policy Recommendations For

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