AI-Powered Social Media Manipulation App Promises to 'Shape Reality'

Impact, an app that describes itself as “AI-powered infrastructure for shaping and managing narratives in the modern world,” is testing a way to organize and activate supporters on social media in order to promote certain political messages. The app aims to summon groups of supporters who will flood social media with AI-written talking points designed to game social media algorithms. 

In video demos and an overview document provided to people interested in using a prototype of the app that have been viewed by 404 Media, Impact shows how it can send push notifications to groups of supporters directing them at a specific social media post and provide them with AI-generated text they can copy and paste in order to flood the replies with counter arguments.

The overview document describes Impact as a “A Volunteer Fire Department For The Digital World,” empowering “masses of ‘good people’” to “fight active fires, stamp out small brush fires, and even do preventative work (prebunking) to stop fires before they have the potential to start.” However, experts say that what Impact proposes could potentially only continue to blur the lines between authentic and inauthentic behavior online and can also lead to a world where only people with the resources to pay for such a service could “shape reality,” as the Impact overview document says. The app also shows another way AI-generated content could continue to flood the internet and distort reality in the same way it has distorted Google search results, book sold on Amazon, and ghost kitchen menus. 

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