Fostering Critical Thinking on Social Media: Combating AI-Generated Fake Posts Upon Natural Disasters

The social media and, in a wider context, SNS in general, are strong tools when it comes to spreading calls for help in an emergency situation such as a natural disaster where mass media cannot reach. Information posted on SNS is a first-hand source from the epicentre of the disaster and is used even for rescue operations. Historically, however, there has been a lot of harmful postings to SNS whenever a natural disaster occurred. The harmful or misleading posts have been in the form of rumors and fake news. There are extensive researches about analysis of the cause of rumours and countermeasures against those malicious activities including how to recognize fake news even using AI. The proposed countermeasures mostly focus on technological engineering such as identification of sources and analysis of the contents. However, the rapid development and wider use of generative AI make the quality of rumors and fake news harder to tackle with. As generative AI is deployed to generate fake news or Deep Fake, those malicious posts become more convincing. The countermeasures to develop better technologies might lead to an endless arms race. This research envisages that the education of Critical Thinking and Nudging for the users should be the effective countermeasure.