Felix Simon swooping in to reject claims that AI-generated misinfo is going to rock the world! I like to say "if creating a bunch of junk worked, newsrooms wouldn't have a problem," but Felix addresses this much much more eloquently:
Increased misinformation supply would only matter if there's unmet demand or a scarcity of misinformation. However, evidence doesn't support either scenario. Costs of production and access are already low.
And despite an abundance of misinformation online, the average user consumes very little. Consumption is concentrated in a small, active group of users. The problem isn't a lack of access but specific traits (e.g. strong partisanship) that lead individuals to seek misinformation.
The problem is not that people do not have access to high-quality information (at least in high-choice media environments) but instead that they reject high-quality information and favour misinformation.