Philosopher's Zone

Slopaganda

Oct 14, 2025
Mark Alfano, a Professor of Philosophy at Macquarie University, dives into the urgent issue of 'slopaganda'—AI-generated propaganda that's spreading misinformation at an unprecedented rate. He traces propaganda's evolution through technology and discusses its strategic use of truth. Alfano explains how generative AI creates personalized, emotionally charged content that can overwhelm fact-checking efforts. He advocates for pre-bunking and digital literacy as defenses against such manipulative messages. The conversation highlights the need for platforms to prioritize trustworthy content.
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INSIGHT

Tech Multiplies Propaganda Reach

  • Propaganda scales with communication technology from amphitheatres to the internet and now generative AI.
  • Generative AI can reach billions quickly and target messages to individual digital footprints.
INSIGHT

Propaganda Isn't Just Falsehoods

  • Propaganda manipulates beliefs and emotions and can use truth or falsehoods to achieve political goals.
  • It is orthogonal to misinformation and disinformation rather than identical to them.
INSIGHT

AI Reflects Cultural Defaults

  • AI image models reproduce training-data biases and treat white Christians as the default for 'religious' images.
  • This leads to ex-nomination where deviation from the assumed 'normal' is explicitly labelled.
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