Incident 602: Russia using artificial intelligence in disinformation campaigns to erode Western support for Ukraine

Description: The Russian government has been stepping up its foreign influence campaigns by using artificial intelligence and emerging technologies to spread disinformation and sow distrust in policies supportive of Ukraine. Part of the strategy includes carrying out influence laundering operations by disseminating their messages to the American public via allies inside nominally independent organizations, according to a recent declassified analysis. This incident is an evolving project.
Editor Notes: - Evolving project and archive: Tracking developments in Russian disinformation campaigns using AI. - Not all events fit neatly with AIID criteria; some lack distinct, tidy descriptions. - Less effective to file numerous issue reports. - Plan to use Incident 602 as a potential catch-all for reporting on AI-generated Russian disinformation events, incidents, and issues. - Incident 585 (“Kremlin-linked entities using generative AI for Russian disinformation in Latin America”) kept separate due to its distinct and interesting nature, potential as a unique archive. - The "incidents" (e.g., bots generating posts) are numerous, leading to challenges in reporting. - Journalistic coverage tends to merge these incidents into overarching, transnational narratives. - Specific details often not explored in-depth in reports, making it difficult to create distinct incident reports. - Exceptions exist for distinct elements (e.g., Incident 198, "Deepfake Video of Ukrainian President Yielding to Russia Posted on Ukrainian Websites and Social Media" and Incident 573, "Deepfake Recordings Allegedly Influence Slovakian Election"), which get dedicated stories. - These collective incidents, while technically fitting as "issues," are more appropriately categorized as "incidents" for visibility and editorial reasons. (It is a matter of negotiating the genre spaces.)

Tools

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Incident Stats

Incident ID
602
Report Count
7
Incident Date
2023-10-02
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Twitter bot network amplifying Russian disinformation about Ukraine war, researcher says - ABC News
abc.net.au · 2022

As Russian tanks rolled across the Ukraine border on February 24, Russia's state-controlled or affiliated news organisations flooded social media with Kremlin disinformation narratives.

Within a week, Twitter had banned about 100 of these a…

Russia's information war expands through Eastern Europe
apnews.com · 2022

WASHINGTON (AP) — As bullets and bombs fall in Ukraine, Russia is waging an expanding information war throughout Eastern Europe, using fake accounts and propaganda to spread fears about refugees and rising fuel prices while calling the West…

Information Warfare in Russia’s War in Ukraine
foreignpolicy.com · 2022

In the lead-up to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and throughout the ongoing conflict, social media has served as a battleground for states and non-state actors to spread competing narratives about the war and portray the ongoing conflict in …

Russia’s New Underpowered Weapon – Artificial Intelligence
cepa.org · 2023

The Kremlin wants to use AI to increase its control over information. The plan faces a fatal flaw: facts.

“Ukraine will be liberated from the Nazis,” declared an ethereal, electric blue AI-powered video of Russian far-right leader Vladimir …

Putin’s Next Target: U.S. Support for Ukraine, Officials Say
nytimes.com · 2023

Russia’s strategy to win the war in Ukraine is to outlast the West.

But how does Vladimir Putin plan to do that?

American officials said they are convinced that Mr. Putin intends to try to end U.S. and European support for Ukraine by using …

The role of AI in Russia's invasion of Ukraine: Interview with expert Anton Tarasyuk
globalvoices.org · 2023

Wars of the 21st century are often describe as high-tech and increasingly dependent on Artificial Intelligence (AI): US occupation of Afghanistan, Russia's invasion of Ukraine --- though the latest Hamas attack on Israel also shows that ove…

AI Helps Uncover Russian State-Sponsored Disinformation in Hungary
darkreading.com · 2023

Arms deliveries. EU sanctions. Ethnic minorities. These were the three topics Hungarian media reported on most frequently between fall 2021 and spring 2022, according to two researchers who analyzed thousands of articles published by Hungar…

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.