Experts Disagree on How to Fight AI Disinformation, but Agree That Health and Politics Need Different Solutions

Abstract

When 54 international experts assessed AI-generated disinformation threats, they revealed a surprising pattern: while video deepfakes received the highest average threat ratings in the political domain (M = 6.31/7), the pattern differed in the health domain, where AI-generated text received the highest average rating (M = 5.80). Experts also diverge on what to do: government regulation drew both the most "most effective" (30%) and the most "least effective" (15%) votes, though rating distributions were contested rather than polarized, indicating disagreement over priorities rather than over efficacy. These findings offer an initial expert map of an AI-disinformation landscape that is still rapidly forming.

arXiv comment16 pages, 5 figures. Author-formatted version; identical in content to the version published in Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review 7(4), 2026, CC BY 4.0. Replication materials: doi:10.7910/DVN/BXO2QA