ABSTRACT
The chapter provides an overview of synthetic media and its capacity for shaping the social dynamics of the Internet, including the proliferation of disinformation online. As calls grow to develop AI responsibly, the chapter discusses how the widespread production and consumption of various forms of AI-generated content, from photorealistic computer-generated images to AI synthetic voice and deepfake videos, can flood the digital environment with misinformation. Importantly, AI tools also allow the development of synthetic simulated users, ranging from social bots to virtual influencers, used to distribute and hype content. Together, synthetic content and synthetic users are sparking anxiety over the extent to which bots take over the Internet, catalyzing a conspiracy theory known as the Dead Internet, which takes the prevalence of synthetic content to its extreme conclusion: the Web has no organic human activity. The chapter theorizes synthetic media by reviewing authors who have previously explored the lack of correspondence between media and social reality, generating avenues for future research.
