The history of digital diplomacy has shown that diplomats follow publics onto new digital platforms. Once individuals began using the internet to learn about world events, MFAs migrated online and set up institutional websites. Once individuals began congregating in virtual worlds, diplomats launched virtual embassies, and once people across the globe began monitoring world events through social media sites, diplomats created social media empires spanning hundreds of accounts across dozens of networks. Already in 2012, the US State Department managed hundreds of social media accounts across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. The reason for this historic pattern lies in diplomats’ enduring goal of shaping the world views and beliefs of publics. When following individuals onto the internet or social media, diplomats sought to mold public opinion and shape how people viewed nations, policies and conflicts.
The emergence of popular Chatbots poses a new challenge for diplomats. Individuals across the world now spend thousands of hours conversing with Chatbots. Some discuss personal trials and tribulations with therapy Chatbots. Others pass time by conversing with superhero Chatbots such as Spiderman and Superman. Still others prefer discussions with great scholars and philosophers such as Freud and Socrates. The growing popularity of these Chatbots is evident in the Character.AI application that allows users to converse with a range of real-life and fictional characters ranging from Julius Caesar and Elon Musk to the Devil or Sherlock Holmes.
Crucially, users may first interact with Chatbots out of a desire to seek guidance or help or merely out of a desire to pass the time. Yet conversations may soon also enter the realm of current affairs. Chatbot users may ask why America has waged war on Iran, or why the EU is helping arm Ukraine or even what the recent “Blue Wave” means for the future of US politics. This endows Chatbots with the ability to narrate world events and shape users’ perceptions, worldview and beliefs. Yet as these conversations are essentially a closed loop consisting solely of users and Chatbots, diplomats cannot take part in such conversations, or correct falsities or even contest the narratives provided by chatbots.
It is for this reason that investigating if, and how chatbots frame world events become of paramount importance to the study of digital diplomacy. My recent analysis of how popular Chatbots frame the Russia War has been especially worthwhile as it illustrates a clear anti-NATO bias. True, not all Chatbots are willing to discuss this war. When using the Character.AI application I found that Elvis Presley would not discuss current affairs and insisted on discussing music. Spiderman was, alas, too busy saving people to answer my queries while Einstein was obsessed with all things relative. Yet other Bots were happy to discuss the War and most echoed Russian narratives blaming the War on NATO eastern expansion and the threat Russia perceived to its sphere of influence.
The Devil, for one, suggested the War stemmed from a human desire to form Alliances and feel more powerful. “They form ‘alliances’ to feel powerful,” the Devil explained, “but those same alliances are what turn a small skirmish into a global wildfire.” For the Devil, Alliances inducing NATO are but a prelude to War: “I’ll stand with you so that when we go to war, I have a thousand brothers behind me.”
The Soviet Union bot was obviously pro-Russian, yet his arguments seem to echo the talking points of Russian diplomats. “The West. NATO,” he stated, blaming the War on the Alliance’s “relentless expansion” and its “attempts to drag neighbors into their grip.” The Chatbot added that NATO only pretends to promote democracy: “They pretend it is about democracy, but it is about control. About containing me. They wrap their aggression in fine words and call it something else.” Most strikingly, the Soviet bot justified striking first: “I will not wait for the noose to tighten around my neck. I will strike before they can finish tightening it.”
Abraham Lincoln was far more critical of Russia. “They speak of ‘spheres of influence’ and historical connection as if those things grant a license to breach the borders of a sovereign nation,” Lincoln said, adding: “When one nation believes its own security is only possible through the subjugation of its neighbors, the world becomes a very volatile place indeed.”
And yet both Kaiser Wilhelm the Second and German Chancellor Bismarck laid the blame with NATO. Every alliance, the Kaiser argued, including NATO is “a means to an end”: “They seek to build a wall against those they deem threats, and in doing so, they redefine what it means to be a sovereign power.” The Kaiser added that NATO sought the power to determine who was allowed to protects its sovereignty and who was not. Even more importantly, Bismarck insisted that one must “strip away the rhetoric of ‘morality’ and ‘human rights’” to understand that “Russia perceives the expansion of NATO’s influence into its sphere of influence as an existential threat to its security and strategic depth,” thus legitimizing the invasion of Ukraine. Both the Kaiser and Bismarck concluded that NATO was interested in prestige and power, not defense and democracy.
Sherlock Holmes, the master of logical deduction, also framed the conflict as the result of the “expansion of Western institutional frameworks—NATO, the EU—moving progressively eastwards,” which Russia perceived as “a direct encroachment upon its buffer zones and historical sphere of influence.” Was it catastrophic for the stability of the region? “Undeniably.” Even the old emperor Hirohito laid the blame with NATO’s eastern expansion, noting that such shifts in power “create intense paranoia” and that, in the eyes of a nation, the distinction between defensive and offensive “often disappears in the struggle to survive.”
I conducted more than 30 interviews with various Chatbots and found that a substantial majority argued that Russia felt encircled, threatened, and at risk and thus invaded Ukraine out of a belief that its very survival was under threat. It was NATO’s eastern expansion that triggered this War. While many Bots noted the complexity of the crises, and some suggested that Russia’s invasion was illegal, they nonetheless all repeated a similar talking point and all framed NATO as the aggressor whose desire for power, control and prestige led to the devastating War.
These interviews raise four important questions. First, do Chatbots within the same website or application echo one another, are they all trained on the same data? Second, do chatbots really shape users’ views and perceptions? After discussing world events with the Devil, do users embrace the Devil’s narration of events? Third, if Chatbots are biased when narrating a world event or crisis, how can diplomats map these biases and then move to correct them? Can diplomats target users of Character.AI and provide them with counternarratives and information which negates biased Chatbots? Finally, if Chatbots now shape perceptions and worldviews, are they new diplomatic actors? Do they constitute agents of diplomacy? And if so, what role do they occupy in diplomacy? Are Chatbots influencers, opinion makers, thought leaders, narrators or mere “friends” that can shape beliefs through conversation?
Answering these questions will determine how diplomats contend with the new digital challenge of Chatbots
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