Japan's right wing turns AI into a new tool of historical revisionism

Editor's note: Xu Weijun is an associate research professor at the Institute of Public Policy, South China University of Technology.

His research interests include East Asian international relations and China-US relations.

The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

Recently, discussions over Japan using AI to distort the history of its aggression against China have attracted attention.

Based on currently verifiable materials, there is indeed a phenomenon in the Japanese cyberspace where generative AI is being used to mass-produce anti-China, xenophobic and even historically revisionist content.

At the same time, the Japanese government has in recent years continued to strengthen its strategic communication capabilities concerning Japan's national image, historical perception and international narratives while beginning to incorporate AI into official systems for information gathering, public opinion analysis and responses to so-called cognitive warfare.

The potential risks arising from the convergence of these two trends should not be underestimated.

AI is significantly altering both the production methods and dissemination logic of Japan's right-wing discourse.

Japan's Asahi Shimbun has reported that crowdsourcing platforms such as CrowdWorks have hosted numerous projects recruiting creators to produce videos critical of China, with contractors instructed to use generative AI to create images, narration, scripts and videos.

Such content is based on pre-determined political and nationalist stances, with AI then used to mass-produce fictional stories that cater to audience emotions.

In essence, these are ideologically driven products generated through an industrialized production process.

In the past, the dissemination of historical revisionist and xenophobic content in Japan relied primarily on right-wing politicians, groups, publishing houses and a limited number of media outlets with clear political orientations.

Although such forces have long existed, the cost of producing content was relatively high, and their reach remained constrained.

Generative AI has broken through these barriers.