DeepfakeHigh
Matryoshka Campaign Allegedly Uses Deepfakes to Impersonate Academics for Pro-Russian Propaganda
- Occurred
- Dec 13, 2024
- Published
- Jan 10, 2025
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
The Matryoshka disinformation campaign allegedly used AI to impersonate academics, reportedly spreading claims supporting Russia and urging Ukraine's surrender. These videos are said to have misrepresented scholars’ views in order to amplify pro-Russian propaganda. The campaign reportedly exploited global social media platforms to allegedly mislead viewers and undermine trust in credible academic voices while fueling misinformation about the Ukraine conflict.
Developers
- Deepfake technology developers
Deployers
- Storm-1679
- Russian entities linked to GRU
- Reliable Russian News
- Operation Overload
- Matryoshka
Harmed parties
- Ronald Hutton
- Academics targeted by Storm-1679
- Academics targeted by Operation Overload
- Academics targeted by Matryoshka
Classification
Category confidence: 95%
Severity confidence: 90%
Rationale: Campaign uses AI-generated deepfakes to impersonate academics for propaganda, causing significant misinformation and trust erosion.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8