A new study from the University of Southern California warns that AI programs can now run propaganda campaigns without human involvement.
The study asks us to imagine a scenario where two weeks before a major election, thousands of posts flood X, Reddit, and Facebook, all pushing the same narrative and amplifying each other. It might seem like an organic movement created by humans. Instead, it’s a bunch of AI agents running the entire campaign.
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That’s not a hypothetical. It’s the central finding of a new paper accepted for publication at The Web Conference 2026, written by researchers at USC’s Information Sciences Institute.
The findings highlight serious concerns about how bad actors could weaponize AI to flood the internet with misinformation and manipulate public opinion.
How did researchers come to this conclusion?
The researchers built a simulated X-like environment with 50 AI agents, with 10 agents
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