Microsoft says Chinese government groups are still looking to disrupt US society

A number of AI tools are actively being used to generate and spread controversial content by China-backed groups in order to sow division in the US and abroad, Microsoft has said

In a new report, the company claims the artificial inflation and circulation of divisive issues is intended to divide US society and encourage criticism of the Biden administration, especially in the run up to election season.

Much of the content spread by the Beijing-backed groups centers around US government collusion in natural and man-made disasters, hinting at secret weapons testing and hidden motives as the cause.

Splitting society ahead of elections

Artificial weather manipulation has been a popular topic for conspiracy theorists. The China-backed group known as Storm-1376 has added fuel to the fire with several posts alleging that the August 2023 Hawaii wildfires were actually caused by the testing of a secret military “meteorological weapon”. The posts included AI-generated images of beachfront properties and roads engulfed in huge fires and were translated into 31 languages to extend the posts’ audience and further fan the flames.

A second set of posts took aim at Japan’s decision to dispose of nuclear wastewater into the Pacific ocean, which was deemed safe by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Some posts accused the US government of encouraging the decision in order to poison the water supplies of other countries.

Storm-1376 may be trying to influence the upcoming US presidential election, using lessons learnt from its attempts to interfere with the Taiwan elections earlier this year. The group began by artificially amplifying several spurious posts and memes in December 2023, before moving on to generating and posting their own content, including a deepfake audio of candidate Terry Gou endorsing another candidate on election day.

There have also been a number of posts alleging US government involvement in the Kentucky Thanksgiving train derailment, suggesting that the government was “deliberately hiding something” in the spill of molten sulfur near the town of Livingston.