Entertainment megafirms use AI-generated media to shape what people watch, feel, and believe. They offer each person entirely AI-crafted stories, analyzing what provokes or holds that individual’s attention and tailoring the narrative to maximize engagement. Social media algorithms manipulate emotions to keep people using their platforms: enraged, captivated, distracted, and addicted.
News AIs let consumers subscribe to different ideological accounts of events. These become “competing realities,” with audiences receiving different versions of the world according to their chosen perspective. AI also generates ideologies around which entire communities form, creating an ecosystem of algorithmic cults.
Resistance movements face corporations that can fabricate whole historical narratives in real time. The misinformation they struggle against extends beyond claims about current events to invented accounts of the past.