Fabricating the facts: disinformation and AI in Taiwan

Abstract

Artificial intelligence is reshaping how disinformation spreads. This report examines how AI intersects with contested information flows in Taiwan, one of the world’s most targeted democracies when it comes to foreign influence and digital manipulation. Drawing on interviews with fact-checkers, policymakers, digital literacy advocates, and analysts, the study explores how Taiwanese society understands and responds to the risks of AI-driven disinformation.

The report finds that disinformation in Taiwan is less about technological novelty and more about underlying political and social tensions. Deep polarisation, particularly around socio-economic inequality, democratic freedoms secured after the martial law period, and cross-strait relations, creates fertile ground for manipulation. Corporate social media platforms amplify emotionally charged content, making anxiety and outrage powerful drivers of visibility and engagement.

AI aggravates these concerns by radically increasing the scope of potential surveillance and analysis, offering the ability to generate fake media content quickly and at low cost, and reproducing or creating social biases through deceptive chatbots. In the face of these challenges, Taiwan has developed a ‘whole-of-society’ approach to counter contested information flows at various levels. Despite its flaws, this pragmatic approach should inspire confidence in the general ability of democratic societies to create resilience against manipulative uses of information.