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Defence Innovation Network (DIN) Scholarship

This scholarship focuses on the critical challenge of countering malicious AI-generated content and disinformation campaigns.

This project develops AI-driven methods to detect and trace AI-generated or manipulated news, addressing disinformation and influence campaigns. It enhances national security by verifying news authenticity and analysing synthetic media trends.

Key details

  • 20246717
  • PhD
  • Applications close on 30 April 2025
  • Domestic
  • Information technologies
  • Up to $44,000 p.a. (2025 rate)

Recent developments in AI have led to the ability to produce high-quality machine-generated content that is difficult to distinguish from human-produced content. While there are many potential positive applications, they exhibit a propensity to generate erroneous, hallucinating or misleading content and can be exploited for malicious applications, such as generating false but credible-sounding content and profiles at scale.

This leads to two core challenges:

  1. It is still an active challenge to accurately detect this machine-generated content.
  2. These uses also make it more difficult to attribute the media to a particular source thereby obscuring the accountability. Disinformation and influence campaign detection are key applications in this context.

Anticipated outcomes

This project aims to develop a comprehensive toolkit for countering AI-generated disinformation campaigns within 36 months. Anticipated outcomes include:
  • identification of AI-generated text and false narratives within social media campaigns
  • pinpointing the source of AI-generated content, potentially through watermarking LLMs
  • detection of hidden agendas within text data, such as propaganda or rumours
  • distinguishing between genuine audience reactions and coordinated efforts by bots or troll farms.

Availability

This scholarship is available to eligible candidates to undertake a direct entry three-year PhD program.

Components

The scholarship comprises:

  • a tuition fee offset or scholarship
  • a living allowance stipend
  • a stipend top-up from Defence Innovation Network.

The value of each stipend scholarship is $44,000 per annum (full time, indexed) for three years.