Description: A video that reportedly went viral on X in early February 2025 claimed USAID paid celebrities to visit Ukraine. The clip mimicked E! News branding and included a narrator with a British accent. Individuals and organizations named denied any involvement. Researchers attributed the video to Matryoshka (AKA Operation Overload and Storm-1679), an influence campaign suspected of using AI-generated narration and editing, though tool use has not been independently confirmed.
Editor Notes: This incident ID collects reports that specifically focus on the reported USAID celebrity impersonation incident, but it is important to consider it particularly in relation to Incident 1060. In addition to 1060, please also consult Incidents 909, 929, and 931.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Unknown voice cloning technology developer and Unknown deepfake technology developer developed an AI system deployed by Storm-1679 , Russian-linked disinformation network , Operation Overload and Matryoshka, which harmed USAID , Truth , The New York Times , Sean Penn , Politico , Orlando Bloom , New York University , E! News , Ben Stiller , BBC and Angelina Jolie.
Alleged implicated AI systems: X (Twitter) , Unknown voice cloning technology and Unknown deepfake technology
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1061
Report Count
2
Incident Date
2025-02-07
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
The video falsely claiming that the United States Agency for International Development paid Ben Stiller, Angelina Jolie and other actors millions of dollars to travel to Ukraine appeared to be a clip from E!News, though it never appeared on…
Russian disinformation doesn't always work.
Out of 135 Kremlin-aligned propaganda posts analyzed in a new report, 134 more or less fell flat with social media users, getting liked and reshared mostly by a network of bots. But one went big -…
Variants
A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.
