DeepfakeMedium
Reportedly Viral USAID Disinformation Video Linked to Russian-Aligned Campaign Known as Matryoshka
- Occurred
- Feb 7, 2025
- Published
- May 6, 2025
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
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.
Developers
- Deepfake technology developers
- Synthetic audio generation technology developers
Deployers
- Storm-1679
- Russian-linked disinformation network
- Operation Overload
- Matryoshka
Harmed parties
- USAID
- The New York Times
- Sean Penn
- Politico
- Orlando Bloom
- New York University
- E! News
- Ben Stiller
- BBC
- Angelina Jolie
- Epistemic integrity
Tags
- deepfake
- voice cloning
- impersonation
- celebrity impersonation
- media outlet impersonation
- Operation Overload
- Matryoshka
- Storm-1679
- Russia-aligned activity
- influence operations
- disinformation
- misinformation
- information warfare
- USAID
- Elon Musk
- Donald Trump Jr.
- Clemson Media Forensics Hub
- E! News
- Volodymyr Zelenskyy
- bot amplification
- Ukraine war narratives
- Russia
- Ukraine
- United States
- epistemic distortion
- epistemic harm
- deception
Classification
Category confidence: 85%
Severity confidence: 80%
Rationale: AI-generated disinformation video linked to Russian campaign, but tool use not independently confirmed.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8