One of thebiggest problems in media today is so-called “fake news,” which is so highly pernicious in part because it superficially resembles the real thing. AI tools promise to help identify it, but in order for it to do so, researchers have found that the best way is for that AI to learn to create fake news itself — a double-edged sword, though perhaps not as dangerous as it sounds.

Groveris a new system created by the University of Washingtonand Allen Institute for AI (AI2) computer scientists that is extremely adept at writing convincing fake news on myriad topics and as many styles — and as a direct consequence is also no slouch at spotting it. The paper describing the model is available here.

The idea of a fake news generator isn’t new — in fact, OpenAI made a splash recently by announcing that its own text-generating AI was too dangerous to release publicly. But Grover’s creators believe we’ll only get better at fighting generated fake news by putting the tools to create it out there to be studied.

OpenAI built a text generator so good, it’s considered too dangerous to release

“These models are not capable, we think right now, of inflicting serious harm. Maybe in a few years they will be, but not yet,” the lead on the project, Rowan Zellers, told me. “I don’t think it’s too dangerous to release — really, weneedto release it, specifically to researchers who are studying this problem, so we can build better defenses. We need all these communities, security, machine learning, natural language processing, to talk to each other — we can’t just hide the model, or delete it and pretend it never happened.”

Therefore and to that end, you can try Grover yourself right here. (Though you might want to read the rest of this article first so you know what’s going on.)

Voracious reader

The AI was created by having it ingest an enormous corpus of real news articles, a dataset called RealNews that is being introduced alongside Grover. The 120-gigabyte library contains articles from the end of 2016 through March of this year, from the top 5,000 publications tracked by Google News.

By studying the style and content of millions of real news articles, Grover builds a complex model of how certain phrases or styles are used, what topics and features follow one another in an article, how they’re associated with different outlets, ideas, and so on.

This is done using an “adversarial” system, wherein one aspect of the model generates content and another rates how convincing it is — if it doesn’t meet a threshold, the generator tries again, and eventually it learns what is convincing and what isn’t. Adversarial setups are a powerful force in AI research right now, often being used to create photorealistic imagery from scratch.

Mona Lisa frown: Machine learning brings old paintings and photos to life

It isn’t just spitting out random articles, either. Grover is highly parameterized, meaning its output is highly dependent on input. So if you tell it to create a fake article about a study linking vaccines and autism spectrum disorders, you are also free to specify that the article should seem as if it appeared on CNN, Fox News, or even TechCrunch.

I generated a few articles, which I’ve pasted at the bottom of this one, but here’s the first bit of an example:

Serial entrepreneur Dennis Mangler raises 6M to create blockchain-based drone delivery

May 29, 2019 – Devin Coldewarg

Drone delivery — not so new, and that raises a host of questions: How reliable is the technology? Will service and interference issues flare up?

Drone technology is changing a lot, but its most obvious use — package delivery — has never been perfected on a large scale, much less by a third party. But perhaps that is about to change.

Serial entrepreneur Dennis Mangler has amassed an impressive — by the cybernetic standards of this short-lived and crazy industry — constellation of companies ranging from a top-tier Korean VC to a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon, ranging from a functional drone repair shop to a developer of commercial drone fleets.

But while his last company (Amazon’s Prime Air) folded, he has decided to try his hand at delivery by drone again with Tripperell, a San Francisco-based venture that makes sense of the cryptocurrency token space to create a bridge from blockchain to delivery.

The system they’re building is sound — as described in a new Medium post, it will first use Yaman Yasmine’s current simple crowdsourced drone repair platform, SAA, to create a drone organization that taps into a mix of overseas networks and domestic industry.

From there the founders will for

Asia

How a national security threat label has reignited Indonesia’s LGBTQ debate

Indonesia last October classified the “spread of LGBTQ culture” as one of the country’s non-military threats. A series of developments thrust the provision into the public eye this month, sparking a debate.

New: You can now listen to articles.

This audio is generated by an AI tool.

Ericssen

SINGAPORE: For more than eight months, a provision tucked away in an Indonesian presidential regulation on national defence drew little public attention.

In an appendix to Presidential Regulation No. 111/2025 on the General National Defence Policy signed in October last year, the government classified the “spread of LGBTQ culture” as one of the country’s non-military threats.

The clause, referring to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and queer culture, appeared alongside a range of other threats deemed capable of affecting national resilience. They included illegal trafficking, natural resource theft, terrorism, atheism and radicalism.

A presidential regulation is a legally binding regulation published in the State Gazette, while General National Defence Policy documents are highly technical and usually attract little public attention outside government and defence circles.

But a series of developments thrust the provision into the public eye this month, sparking a debate on the place of LGBTQ issues in state policy and the extent to which social issues should be framed within Indonesia’s defence strategy.

The issue quickly spread beyond social media into mainstream Indonesian media with national outlets including Antara, Kumparan, and Tempo examining the regulation and prompting public responses from senior government officials.

Some observers and activists say the clause could heighten discrimination against LGBTQ individuals in society, even as Indonesian ministers have defended the regulation while saying the government has no intention of curtailing the fundamental rights of citizens.

“As Indonesian citizens, LGBTQ people are entitled to education, employment, healthcare and other public services without restrictions, segregation or discrimination,” Indonesia’s Human Rights Minister Natalius Pigai told CNA in a phone interview.

CNA Games

Guess Word

Crack the word, one row at a time

Buzzword

Create words using the given letters

Mini Sudoku

Tiny puzzle, mighty brain teaser

Mini Crossword

Small grid, big challenge

Word Search

Spot as many words as you can

Show Less

Indonesia’s Human Rights Minister Natalius Pigai. (Photo courtesy of Human Rights Ministry)

But he added that Indonesian society is not ready to accept the LGBTQ community, even as the state remains obliged to respect, protect and fulfil every citizen’s rights to education, employment, healthcare and public services.

“The time has not yet come to formally recognise them as an official group because society is not yet ready to accept them,” he said.

HOW THE CLAUSE CAME TO PUBLIC ATTENTION

While it remains unclear what first drew widespread attention to the provision, it resurfaced amid a series of developments involving LGBTQ issues. One was a Pride Month-themed social media post in mid-June by Suara Mahasiswa, a student publication at the University of Indonesia.

The post had led to a heated online debate, with critics arguing it was inconsistent with Indonesia’s religious and social norms. They questioned why it invoked the Pancasila national ideology to defend the LGBTQ community. Pancasila comprises five principles: Belief in one God, civilised humanity, national unity, democracy and social justice.

The backlash prompted the university to publicly distance itself from the post and launch an internal review.

Then in late June, the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) said it was preparing an academic paper and a draft bill to criminalise LGBTQ-related conduct for Parliament’s National Legislation Programme.

MUI deputy chairman Muhammad Cholil Nafis argued that moral appeals alone were no longer sufficient to curb what he described as the growing activities and campaign surrounding LGBTQ culture.

“If there are no legal penalties at all, it eventually becomes normal. We should not normalise it. Punishment helps people understand that it is not normal,” he said.

“Deviant activities, such as same-sex parties, are now increasingly being displayed openly in public without any sense of shame,” he added.

Scrutiny then shifted to the new regulation that had previously gone largely unnoticed.

The belated attention came as no surprise to Agus Wahyudi, head of the Inter-Religious Studies Programme at Gadjah Mada University (UGM) in Yogyakarta.

Documents such as the General National Defence Policy typically circulate within government bureaucracy and rarely become the subject of public debate, he said.

But a provision can take on political significance when a series of events – in this case, the Pride Month-themed social media post and the MUI’s planned bill – draws the public’s notice, said Agus.

“What changed was not necessarily the policy itself, but the public attention it attracted,” Agus said.

WHY WAS IT PLACED IN A NATIONAL DEFENCE DOCUMENT?

Asked whether the presidential regulation represented the first national policy to explicitly mention LGBTQ, human rights lawyer Asfinawati said Indonesia’s 2008 Pornography Law referred to “lesbian” and “homosexual” acts in its explanatory notes to a provision banning the production, distribution and sale of pornographic material.

It defined what the law described as “deviant sexual intercourse” for the purposes of pornography offences, rather than creating a standalone offence based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

Presidential Regulation No. 111/2025 goes further by classifying the “spread of LGBTQ culture” itself as a non-military threat, argued Asfinawati, the former chair of the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation.

“This regulation no longer links it to sexual conduct. Simply having a particular sexual orientation or gender identity is placed within a threat framework,” she said.

Experts have questioned whether a national defence framework was an appropriate instrument for addressing issues such as sexual orientation and gender identity.

In principle, national defence should focus on military threats, said Tangguh Chairil, a lecturer in security studies at the Department of International Relations at Binus University, Jakarta.

Indonesia, however, classifies threats into three categories: Military, non-military and hybrid. As a result, issues beyond the traditional defence sphere are increasingly viewed as national security issues.

“Because the definition is so broad, almost anything can be treated as a national security threat,” Tangguh told CNA.

Classifying LGBTQ culture as a non-military threat under a defence framework means the issue may be treated as a security concern requiring state attention and resources, he added.

“Issues that have been successfully securitised tend to receive greater attention than others,” he said.

Yusril Ihza Mahendra, Coordinating Minister for Legal Affairs, Human Rights, Immigration, and Corrections, told news outlet Tempo on Jul 9 that “non-military threat” was used to categorise risks against national resilience.

In the socio-cultural context, “resilience” refers to values, ethics, character of the younger generation, families, digital space, and social cohesion, he said.

“What the government perceives as a threat is the campaign, propaganda, and dissemination of LGBT behaviour aimed at altering the values that align with the nation’s culture and morality,” he added.

Indonesia’s Chief Minister for Law and Human Rights, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, speaks as Australia’s Minister for Home Affairs, Tony Burke, listens during a press conference following their meeting in Jakarta, Indonesia, December 3, 2024. (REUTERS/Willy Kurniawan)

Asfinawati said the regulation cannot serve as the legal basis for introducing new criminal provisions or for regional governments to impose criminal sanctions unless authorised by law.

Under Indonesian law, a person’s sexual orientation as well as consensual same-sex relations between adults are not, by themselves, criminal offences. The exception is Aceh province, which implements Islamic crimina

To detect fake news, this AI first learned to write it

Voracious reader

COLDCARD SECURITY RISK: IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED

Coldcard Security Notice Puts Bitcoin Wallet Entropy Risk Back In Focus