DeepfakeHigh
Russian Disinformation Campaign Allegedly Used Fake News Site 'KBSF-San Francisco News' and Deepfake Video to Falsely Accuse Kamala Harris of 2011 Hit-and-Run
- Occurred
- Sep 2, 2024
- Published
- Oct 25, 2024
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
A Russian disinformation campaign allegedly used a fake news site, "KBSF-San Francisco News," and an AI-generated deepfake video to falsely accuse Kamala Harris of a 2011 hit-and-run accident in San Francisco. The deepfake featured a fabricated African-American victim, whose AI-generated testimony spread widely across social media. Microsoft identified the hoax as part of Russian cyber influence operations targeting the 2024 U.S. election, with the site registered in Iceland.
Developers
- John Mark Dougan
- Government of Russia
Deployers
- Storm-1516
- KBSF-San Francisco News
- John Mark Dougan
- Government of Russia
Harmed parties
- Kamala Harris
- General public of the United States
- General public
- Epistemic integrity
- Journalistic integrity
- National security and intelligence stakeholders
- Democratic integrity
Tags
- Disinformation
- Russian propaganda
- Deepfake
- False accusation
- Kamala Harris
- Elections in the United States
- John Mark Dougan
- Storm-1516
Classification
Category confidence: 95%
Severity confidence: 90%
Rationale: Russian disinformation campaign used AI-generated deepfake video to falsely accuse Kamala Harris, constituting synthetic media deception with political impact.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8