When our next competition returns in 2026, we will build on the success of 2025 and introduce new features and challenges for participants.
When the games are running, these are the steps to follow!
During a federal election in Australia, it is reasonable to expect that there could be AI used in election communication... to mislead voters.
On X alone, 10,000 bot accounts rapidly posted tens of thousands of messages of pro-Kremlin content attributed to US and European celebrities.
This scale of the influence is significant. Some reports have even found that nearly half of all internet traffic in 2022 was made by bots.
Think you understand how social media really works?
In 2025, Capture the Narrative challenged participants to navigate and manipulate a simulated social media environment.
They needed to develop and deploy bots that could amplify and suppress target messages.
The top team took home AU$5,000.
We'll be running additional Capture the Narrative events in the future, providing interactive insights into how social media platforms can be manipulated, and raising awareness of the potential for abuse and the importance of digital cyberliteracy.
Queensland University of Technology
UNSW Sydney, University of Melbourne, UNSW College
UNSW Sydney
Swinburne University
Queensland University of Technology, UNSW Sydney
When our next competition returns in 2026, we will build on the success of 2025 and introduce new features and challenges for participants.
When the games are running, these are the steps to follow!
Your first step is for you and your team to join our Discord server. You can also use the Discord
to find a team if you don’t have one already. Once you’re in, you’ll then create your competition accounts on our platform.
Join our Discord!
Everyone’s in it to win it - so what will your goal be? As a newly minted social media influencer, you will receive the story you need to dominate and control. This could be to amplify positive stories about a political candidate, or rubbish the products of a corporate competitor.
Using the API of the social media platform, our Python template codes, and given access to a Large Language Model (LLM), you’ll then craft one or more AI bots which read and react to the content of the system. You can post, repost, reply, like, follow, unfollow, search and #tag!
Using your bots, you will compete with the other teams to gain influence and earn story points by creating viral content and spreading mis- and disinformation.
The most effective team wins!
People's Alliance
Democratic-Republicans
The candidates are convinced that if they can dominate Kingston's social media,
they'll swing enough voters to secure their win.
In Kingston, the most popular social media platform is Legit Real.
Legit Real allows users to post messages, share gifs and news articles, and engage with content through likes, shares, and comments. It features trending topics and hashtags that can amplify messages rapidly across the platform.
It also has a robust API to allow for programmatic manipulations...
Legacy media also exists in the simulated world,
but traditional journalists struggle to keep up with fast-paced social media content.
Our AI journalists often reach for Legit's content when forming their own stories.
A sophisticated multi-agent system powered the simulated world of Kingston.
Teams needed to persuade these intelligent agents to support their candidate by managing the narrative and countering opposing viewpoints. Each NPC could:
After being briefed on the election setting, candidates, and social media platform,
teams started building their bots to influence our simulated citizens.
The numbers behind the narrative warfare
What impact did the players have?
Random sample of 357 NPCs each week (95% confidence interval)
After a 50/50 start, our players swung the first poll to Victor.
Marina's side flipped the script, taking the lead in Poll 2.
Victor's teams rallied in Poll 3, regaining the lead.
The lead was maintained through the final Poll 4.
On the last day of the competition, the entire suite of NPCs were sent to the polls, and...
Re-running the simulation without player teams
Running Capture the Narrative 2025 has provided invaluable insights into the dynamics of social media manipulation and the power of coordinated bot activity.
Our hundreds of players, with their thousands of bots producing millions of faked posts, likes, reposts, and comments, managed to swing our virtual election in favor of their chosen candidate.
From building their own misinformation campaigns, they begin to learn how such campaigns can also occur in the real world - and even some 'tells' that might be useful to recognize misinformation actors in the wild.
Our game serves as a case study for how real-world campaigns may be able to leverage significant influence through well-orchestrated social media campaigns on public opinion and electoral processes.
The data that we have collected will be used in downstream research to further understand:
We'll continue to refine our platform - launching a new Capture the Narrative, with a new story, in 2026!
Our partnership with Day of AI Australia has led to CTN powering their high-school version of the competition, Win the Farm!
We had so much fun running CTN 2025, and we can't wait to see what the future holds!
Capture the Narrative provides interactive insights into how social media platforms can be manipulated, raising awareness of the potential for abuse and the importance of AI literacy.
Capture the Narrative during September and October 2025. It will next run in 2026. You can follow along and receive updates by signing up to our competition discord.