Misinformation and Generative AI: How Users Construe Their Sense of Diagnostic Misinformation

ChatGPT has opened a new front in the fake news wars. This chapter is motivated by the rapidly improving capabilities and accessibility of generative AI and rapidly increasing misinformation problems. Misinformation is by no means a new phenomenon, yet its trend is highlighted by the emergence of AI. It might be useful to see misinformation in the context of a new and rapidly evolving AI landscape, which has facilitated the spread of unparalleled volumes of information at lightning speeds. This chapter discusses the misinformation effect by examining how users process and respond to misinformation in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) contexts. Drawing on the heuristic-systematic model, it examines the factors influencing a user’s diagnosticity and likelihood of sharing information and whether explanatory heuristics moderate this relationship. The findings showed that users with high heuristic processing of ethical values and positive diagnostic perception were more likely to proactively discern misinformation than users with low heuristic processing and low diagnostic perception. When exposed to misinformation from GenAI, users’ construed diagnosticity of misinformation can be accurately predicted from their understanding of ethical values. With this focus on misinformation processing, this chapter provides theoretical insights and relevant recommendations for firms to be more resilient in protecting users from the detrimental impact of misinformation.