New Automation for Social Bots: From Trivial Behavior to AI-Powered Communication

Grimme, Christian; Pohl, Janina; Cresci, Stefano, Lüling, Ralf; Preuss, Mike

Abstract

Today, implications of automation in social media, specifically whether social bots can be used to manipulate people's thoughts and behaviors are discussed. Some believe that social bots are simple tools that amplify human-created content, while others claim that social bots do not exist at all and that the research surrounding them is a conspiracy theory. This paper discusses the potential of automation in online media and the challenges that may arise as technological advances continue. The authors believe that automation in social media exists, but acknowledge that there is room for improvement in current scientific methodology for investigating this phenomenon. They focus on the evolution of social bots, the state-of-the-art content generation technologies, and the perspective of content generation in games. They provide a background discussion on the human perception of content in computer-mediated communication and describe a new automation level, from which they derive interdisciplinary challenges.