The Justice Department announced on Tuesday that the U.S. has disrupted a Russian disinformation campaign involving Artificial intelligence-powered bots that created fake profiles on the X social media platform.
It’s President Vladimir Putin’s answer to the terrifying Skynet artificial intelligence network from the Terminator movies.
Government officials seized two internet domains and searched through 968 X accounts that they accuse Russia of using to create an AI “bot farm,” which the department said “Used elements of AI to create fictitious social media profiles—often purporting to belong to individuals in the United States—which the operators then used to promote messages in support of Russian government objectives,” according to the statement.
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The U.S. action was, “The first in disrupting a Russian-sponsored Generative AI-enhanced social media bot farm,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray.
The court document read that the operation was devised by the deputy editor-in-chief at RT, formerly known as Russia Today, a Kremlin-run Russian news organization based in Moscow, in 2022. The goal was to spread RT’s standard television news broadcast on social media. It was part of a Kremlin-approved and funded project run by a Russian intelligence officer.
“As the Russian government continues to wage its brutal war in Ukraine and threatens democracies around the world, the Justice Department will continue to deploy all of our legal authorities to counter Russian aggression and protect the American people,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in the statement.
