Slopaganda: The interaction between propaganda and generative AI

2025-03-03

AI Summary

This paper identifies a novel form of cognitive manipulation—“slopaganda”—arising from the convergence of large-scale generative AI (GAI)-produced low-quality information (“slop”) with traditional propaganda tactics, and documents its systemic erosion of collective decision-making. Methodologically, it introduces and formally defines “slopaganda,” integrating cognitive science, communication studies, and AI ethics to develop an interdisciplinary framework comprising slop content assessment, propagation mechanism analysis, and empirical case validation. Through diagnostic analysis of multiple real-world incidents, the study characterizes the information pollution patterns and diffusion logics of slopaganda, and proposes a three-tier intervention strategy targeting policy formulation, platform governance, and public digital literacy. The core contribution is establishing slopaganda as a critical indicator of the epistemic crisis in the GAI era and providing an actionable, cross-disciplinary response paradigm to safeguard knowledge integrity and democratic deliberation.

Technology Category

• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Artificial General Intelligence
• Application Domains: Misinformation & Fake News
• Humans and AI: Crowd Sourcing and Human Computation

Application Category

• Social Networks and Social Media: Generative AI / large language models and their impact on social systems
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data quality in the era of algorithmically-generated content
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Trust and reliance of crowd workers and data experts on GenAI

Abstract

At least since Francis Bacon, the slogan 'knowledge is power' has been used to capture the relationship between decision-making at a group level and information. We know that being able to shape the informational environment for a group is a way to shape their decisions; it is essentially a way to make decisions for them. This paper focuses on strategies that are intentionally, by design, impactful on the decision-making capacities of groups, effectively shaping their ability to take advantage of information in their environment. Among these, the best known are political rhetoric, propaganda, and misinformation. The phenomenon this paper brings out from these is a relatively new strategy, which we call slopaganda. According to The Guardian, News Corp Australia is currently churning out 3000 'local' generative AI (GAI) stories each week. In the coming years, such 'generative AI slop' will present multiple knowledge-related (epistemic) challenges. We draw on contemporary research in cognitive science and artificial intelligence to diagnose the problem of slopaganda, describe some recent troubling cases, then suggest several interventions that may help to counter slopaganda.

Problem

• Analyzes impact of generative AI on group decision-making.
• Introduces 'slopaganda' as a new epistemic challenge.
• Proposes interventions to counter generative AI misinformation.

Innovation

• Generative AI used for mass content creation
• Cognitive science to diagnose slopaganda issues
• Proposed interventions to counter AI-driven misinformation