2.6 Misinformation, Disinformation, & Mal-information

Misinformation, Disinformation, & Mal-information (MDM)

Because of the ability to generate plausible information at scale, generative AI technologies have exacerbated the potential harms of misinformation, disinformation and mal-information in a time of information abundance. The generation or dissemination of fake, inaccurate, or misleading information through generative AI could be either unintentional or deliberate.

Misinformation refers to inaccurate or false information that is shared without intending to create harm. This could occur as a result of generative AI users not verifying generative AI outputs before sharing them.

Mal-information refers to information that may be rooted in truth or fact, but removed from context or distorted in ways that can mislead. When using generative AI, this might be the result of inaccurate outputs or hallucinations. Generative AI could also be used by malicious individuals to distort information in a way that is plausible.

Disinformation refers to inaccurate or false information that is shared with malicious intend, to mislead recipients or manipulate decision-making or perspectives. Generative AI could be used to generate fake news stories, fake datasets, or otherwise employed in attempts to deceive at large scales.

(Canadian Centre for Cyber Security, 2024; Jaidka et. al., 2025)

One of example of this is the use of text-to-image and text-to-video generative AI tools to produce visual media for the purposes of (malicious or not) deception. A deepfake is the product of generative AI that creates a believable but fake video, audio, or image. They often feature real people saying or doing something that they didn’t really say or do. Deepfakes do have potential benefits for the arts, for social advocacy, for education and for other purposes, but they do present ethical issues because often permission has not been received to use the person’s likeness and because it has the potential to spread misinformation or to mislead people.