US indictments reveal use of AI in disinformation campaign against Russia for 2024 election

According to experts, the Kremlin may use artificial intelligence (AI) in its efforts to manipulate the November presidential election through influence programs.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced charges last week as part of an ongoing investigation into alleged plans by the Russian government to influence American voters through various disinformation campaigns.

US Attorney General Merrick Garland has announced he will crack down on influence peddling by state media and other online platforms as part of a campaign called “Doppleganger.” He has focused on employees of Russia’s state broadcaster RT, but other indictments released this week show that Russia’s initiatives are more far-reaching and complex.

According to CBS News, the U.S. also seized more than two dozen internet domains in connection with the operation and established a task force against election threats, which includes FBI Director Christopher Wray and senior Justice Department officials.

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“This is deadly serious, and we will treat it accordingly,” Garland said as he and Wray announced the charges on Wednesday.

FBI Director Christopher Wray (right) speaks during a meeting of the Department of Justice Election Threats Task Force in Washington, DC, Wednesday, September 4, 2024, as Attorney General Merrick Garland looks on. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

These charges include the alleged use of AI tools to create social media profiles “impersonating U.S. citizens (or other non-Russian citizens)” and giving the impression that they were “the website of a legitimate news outlet.”

“The methods Doppelganger used to increase viewership of the cybersquatted and unique media domains included the use of ‘influencers’ worldwide, paid social media advertising (in some cases created using artificial intelligence tools), and the creation of social media profiles in which the perpetrators posed as U.S. (or other non-Russian) citizens in order to post comments on social media platforms with links to the cybersquatted domains,” the indictment states.

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The Russian operation “Doppleganger” aims to manipulate the November presidential election through influence schemes using deepfake content and other methods. (iStock)

The US Treasury Department has expanded on these allegations in an announcement and placed ten individuals and two companies under the Office of Foreign Assets Control. This allows the US to impose visa restrictions for such operations and offer rewards of up to ten million US dollars as part of the “Rewards for Justice” program.

The Treasury Department reported that Russian state-sponsored actors used generative AI deepfakes and disinformation “to undermine trust in the electoral process and the institutions of the United States.”

The Finance Ministry named Russian nonprofit organizations Autonomous Non-Profit Organization (ANO) Dialog and ANO Dialog Regions as using “deep fake content to develop Russian disinformation campaigns,” including “fake online posts on popular social media accounts… consisting, among other things, of fake documents to elicit an emotional response from the audience.”

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In late 2023, ANO Dialog reportedly “identified US, UK and other personalities as potential targets for deepfake projects.” The website War on Fakes served as a major medium for spreading this fake information and also used bot accounts to target polling stations in the 2024 US election.

Investigative journalist Christo Grozev believes that in the first months of the invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin “fell behind the West,” leading to the decision to use artificial intelligence and “all sorts of new methods to make it indistinguishable from the normal flow of information.” (Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Unfinished Live)

In an interview for PBS News Hour, Belgian investigative journalist Christo Grozev explained that complaints about Russia’s “global propaganda efforts” – which the Kremlin “lost to the West” in the first months of the invasion of Ukraine – led to the decision to use AI and “all sorts of new methods to make it indistinguishable from the normal flow of information.”

“They plan to insert advertisements that are actually disguised as news, and in this way bombard the target audience with things that could be misunderstood as news but are in fact advertising content,” explained Grozev.

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“They plan to disguise this advertising content on a personal level as if it were content from their favorite news sites,” he warned. “While we haven’t seen this in action yet, it is an intention and they claim they have developed the technology to do it.”

“They make it very clear that they will not use any Russian-linked or even separate platforms,” ​​he added. “They will infiltrate the platform that the target is already using. And that’s what sounds scary.”