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🇮🇩 Indonesia /Technology

Using AI to Fight Disinformation, Defamation and Hate

From Republika · () Indonesian

Translated from Indonesian and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Opinion Named sources Context piece
  • Indonesian researchers argue that AI can both amplify misinformation and help combat it, depending on how people deploy the technology.
  • The article cites rising deepfake use, AI-enabled scams and politically targeted manipulation as growing threats in Indonesia.
  • It warns that online gender-based violence and coordinated political influence campaigns have made the issue a direct social harm, not only a technology ethics debate.

Artificial intelligence has become both a tool for strengthening public discourse and a highly efficient machine for spreading lies, the authors argue. The challenge, they write, is to make “good AI” more often heal the public sphere than damage it, and to use it against “bad AI.”

The article cites data from Mafindo showing 1,593 hoaxes recorded between October 2024 and October 2025. Many allegedly originated with AI, including deepfakes and personalized scams designed to appear as if they knew their victims personally. Videos, voices and websites can now be falsified with such precision that sight and hearing are becoming less reliable ways to distinguish truth from fabrication.

The authors also cite figures attributed to Deputy Communications and Digital Affairs Minister Nezar Patria, who said in September 2025 that deepfake content had risen 550 percent in five years. Nine out of ten deepfakes, according to the cited Sensity AI data, were used for harmful purposes. A cybersecurity workshop in Yogyakarta reportedly described a further 1,400 percent increase in deepfake attacks over one year, while AI-based phishing achieved success rates of 54 to 60 percent.

Deepfakes in Indonesia are now used mostly for fraud, as well as to steer public opinion on the political stage.

· Septiaji Eko NugrohoThe Mafindo chairman described the main uses of deepfake technology in Indonesia.

Septiaji Eko Nugroho, chairman of Mafindo’s presidium, said deepfakes in Indonesia are now used mainly for fraud and to steer public opinion in politics. Ahead of preparations for the 2029 election, Elections Supervisory Agency chairman Rahmat Bagja warned that AI, bots, coordinated accounts and micro-targeting could produce political content that voters would struggle to distinguish from reality.

The article presents the harm as human as well as digital. It cites data indicating that at least 11 percent of women aged 15 to 29 have experienced online gender-based violence since childhood, often through deepfakes and visual manipulation. “This is no longer an abstract debate about technology ethics,” the authors write. “It is a real wound borne by real people.”

This is no longer an abstract debate about technology ethics. It is a real wound borne by real people.

· Yandra Arkeman and Archy Renaldy Pratama NugrahaThe authors linked AI-enabled manipulation to online gender-based violence.
About this summary

Originally published by Republika in Indonesian. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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