DeepfakeHigh
Russian Disinformation Campaign Reportedly Used AI-Generated Posts and Videos to Target 2025 Moldovan Parliamentary Elections
- Occurred
- Sep 7, 2025
- Published
- Sep 7, 2025
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
Researchers and European officials reported that Russian operatives have been using purportedly AI-generated posts, videos, and websites to influence Moldova's September 2025 parliamentary elections. Networks of over 900 accounts across TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, and YouTube have reportedly spread fabricated narratives, including reportedly misogynistic and false smears of President Maia Sandu.
Developers
- Large language model developers
- Deepfake technology developers
Deployers
- Storm-1679
- Storm-1516
- Russian state-linked actors
- Matryoshka
- Influence operation groups
- Information manipulation actors
- Pro-Russian information manipulation actors
Harmed parties
- National security and intelligence stakeholders
- Moldovan voters
- Moldovan democratic institutions
- Maia Sandu
- General public of Moldova
- General public
- European Union
- Epistemic integrity
- Democratic integrity
Classification
Category confidence: 85%
Severity confidence: 80%
Rationale: AI-generated synthetic media used for election interference constitutes deepfake activity with significant political harm.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8