When OpenAI, Meta, Google, and Anthropic made their chatbots available around the world last year, millions of people initially used them to evade government censorship. For the 70 percent of the world’s internet users who live in places where the state has blocked major social media platforms, independent news sites, or content about human rights and the LGBTQ community, these bots provided access to unfiltered information that can shape a person’s view of their identity, community, and government.

This has not been lost on the world’s authoritarian regimes, which are rapidly figuring out how to use chatbots as a new frontier for online censorship.

Read more:

Funk, A., Shahbaz, A., & Vesteinsson, K. (2023, October 4). AI Chatbots Are Learning to Spout Authoritarian Propaganda. Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/chatbot-censorship-china-freedom-house/