US DOJ says it disrupted Russian social media influence operation
Al Jazeera
The US Department of Justice reports that it disrupted a Russian-government-backed, AI-enabled propaganda campaign to use a bot farm to spread disinformation.
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has disrupted a Russian operation that used fake social media accounts enhanced by artificial intelligence to covertly spread pro-Kremlin messages in the US and abroad, it said.
The news on Tuesday comes four months before the US presidential election, which security experts widely believe will be the target of both hacking and covert social media influence attempts by foreign adversaries. Senior US officials have said publicly that they are monitoring for schemes intended to disrupt the vote.
The DOJ secured court approval to seize two domain names and search nearly 1,000 social media accounts allegedly associated with the effort.
“With these actions, the Justice Department has disrupted a Russian-government-backed, AI-enabled propaganda campaign to use a bot farm to spread disinformation in the United States and abroad,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
Tuesday’s action marked the first time the US has publicly accused a foreign government of using generative AI in a foreign influence operation, according to DOJ and FBI officials. US officials have warned that adversaries may use the growing power of AI systems to scale up efforts to spread misinformation.
