SECAI Core · phase 11 of 15 · noun

Misinformation

Repeating false claims or rumors without the intention to deceive

The Explain card

Plain English
Misinformation is false information repeated without the intent to deceive. The person sharing it believes it, or simply did not check.
Example
A language model hallucinates a plausible but nonexistent court case in a legal summary, and the user cites it in a filing. No one meant harm; the falsehood spread anyway.
Why it matters
Models produce confident misinformation as a side effect of how they generate text. Defenders add grounding, citations, and human review for consequential outputs rather than trusting fluency.
Hook
Wrong, but sincere.

Word knowledge

How the word is built, where it came from, and what it sits beside in memory.

In a sentence

During incident review, analysts traced misinformation about the model update from an unverified forum post into the training-data pipeline.

How it is built
  • mis- prefix wrongly or incorrectly
  • inform root give knowledge or shape understanding
  • -ation suffix action, process, or result
Where it came from
Origin
an English formation from mis- and information, with information ultimately from Latin informatio
Entered the language
1580s
What changed
Information moved from senses involving formation and instruction toward communicated knowledge, while mis- marked that knowledge as faulty.
How it is spelled
Pattern
The prefix mis- joins directly to the base without a hyphen.
Pattern
The suffix -ation forms a noun and is spelled with ti before on.

Spelled like

  • misinterpretation
  • misclassification
  • disinformation
  • confirmation
Broken into chunks
  • mis
    • misread
    • misjudge
    • misleading
  • inform
    • information
    • informative
    • informed
  • ation
    • verification
    • classification
    • authentication
What it sits beside

Same subject

Same shape

information integrity risks

mis- words

  • misclassification
  • misinterpretation
  • misconfiguration

Where it sits in the deck

Phase 11: Threat Landscape: Attack Vectors and Adversarial Techniques

With defences named, learn what they must defend against — the full catalogue of attack techniques targeting AI systems, their inputs, outputs, training pipelines, and supply chains.

Neighbours in this phase