misinformation

Misinformation and disinformation is the spreading, often through social media of material that appears or purports to be factual, but is false. While social media has made the spread of misinformation easier, AI has made it harder to detect as {[deep fakes}} can look like real photographs or videos and large language models can create text that is highly convincing. The terms misinformation and disinformation are used fairly interchangably, but the 'dis' prefix carries a little more intent, so if you want to make the distinction, one can talk about a well intentioned person unwittingly spreading misinformation in contrast to someone deliberately spreading disinformation.