Contributor: Investigate the AI campaigns flooding public agencies with fake comments

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California built its tradition of open government — including for citizen boards that set the rules for such functions as automotive repair and security guard licensing — precisely to keep well-funded corporate interests in check.Lobbyists and special interests are constantly scheming to defeat the will of the majority.

Now they are able to do more damage using artificial intelligence to simulate fake grassroots opposition to clean air measures, and they are surreptitiously using the identities of real people to deceive regulators.Last June, the South Coast Air Quality Management District received more than 20,000 comments opposing a pair of clean air rules that would have prevented 2,500 premature deaths and 10,000 new cases of asthma.A February investigation by the Los Angeles Times revealed that those comments were submitted through CiviClick, a Washington-based AI-powered comment generation platform, orchestrated by a local political consultant with ties to the natural gas industry.

When the district’s cybersecurity team reached out to a small sample of commenters to verify their identities, a majority of respondents said that they had not submitted the comments in their names.Even so, the flood of fake comments seemingly worked.These rules, vehemently opposed by the natural gas industry, already watered down by the district to near-toothlessness, were ultimately rejected by the board — apparently overwhelmed by the flood of fake opposition to even the mildest effort to limit pollution from gas-burning appliances.This Southern California campaign was not an isolated incident.

A recent investigation by the San Francisco Chronicle also revealed that an industry front group used Speak4, a platform that advertises its use of AI, to submit dozens of comments regurgitating talking points from the fossil fuel industry in an attempt to weaken and delay clean air rules in th...