State Media Control Influences Large Language Models (opens in new tab)

We show through six studies that government control of the media across the world already influences the output of large language models (LLMs) via their training data. We use a cross-national audit to show that LLMs exhibit a stronger pro-government valence in the languages of countries with lower media freedom than those with higher media freedom. This result is correlational so to triangulate the specific mechanism of how state media control can influence LLMs, we develop a multi-part case...