A Russian internet propaganda campaign backed by the Kremlin and using artificial intelligence to spread disinformation in the United States has been thwarted.
WASHINGTON — A Kremlin-backed Russian propaganda campaign that used artificial intelligence to spread online disinformation in the United States has been thwarted, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday.
U.S. officials said the internet operation was part of an ongoing effort to sow discord in the United States by creating fictitious social media profiles purporting to belong to real Americans but actually designed to advance Russian government objectives, such as spreading disinformation about the war with Ukraine.
According to U.S. officials, the scheme was hatched in 2022 after a senior editor at Russian state-run media outlet RT, which is registered with the Justice Department as a foreign agent, helped develop technology for so-called social media bot farms. The scheme was supported and funded by the Kremlin, with officers from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) leading a private intelligence agency that spread disinformation on social media through a network of fake accounts.
RT’s press office did not directly respond to questions about the allegations.
The bot farm turmoil comes as U.S. officials sound the alarm about the potential for AI technology to influence this year’s election and amid ongoing concerns that foreign influence campaigns by hostile powers could sway the opinions of unsuspecting voters, much like what happened in 2016 when Russia launched a massive but covert trolling campaign on social media aimed at helping Republican Donald Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton in the presidential election.
“Today’s action marks the first time we have disrupted a Russian-backed generative AI-powered social media bot farm,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement. “Russia intended to use this bot farm to spread AI-generated foreign disinformation, with AI assistance to undermine our Ukrainian partners, and influence geopolitical narrative in favor of the Russian government.”
According to the Department of Justice, among the fake posts was a video posted by someone claiming to be a Minneapolis, Minnesota resident that showed Russian President Vladimir Putin saying that the regions of Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania were “gifts” given to those countries for liberating them from Russian forces during World War II.
In another example, someone posing as a U.S. voter responded to a federal candidate’s social media post about the war in Ukraine with a video of President Putin justifying Russia’s actions, according to the Justice Department.
As part of the disruption operation, the Department of Justice seized two domain names and searched 968 accounts on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
The software was used to spread disinformation in countries including Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Ukraine and Israel, according to a joint cybersecurity advisory released Tuesday by U.S., Dutch and Canadian authorities.
The advisory said that as of last June, the software, called Meliorator, only worked on X, but that its functionality could probably be extended to other social media networks.
