HISPI Project Cerebellum
AI Incidents

AI-Generated Imagery and Multilingual Disinformation in Chinese Campaign Regarding Maui Wildfires

August 8, 2023

In a disinformation campaign concerning wildfires across Maui, Chinese operatives utilized AI-generated imagery to enhance the credibility of false narratives. These narratives claimed that the wildfires were the result of a secret "weather weapon" being tested by the United States. Researchers from Microsoft and other organizations identified these AI-generated images as a significant new tactic in influence operations.
Alleged deployer
chinese-government
Alleged developer
unknown
Alleged harmed parties
hawaiian-government, general-public, american-government

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/565

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.