The U.S. has spearheaded a global law enforcement operation dismantling nearly 1,000 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, and a pair of domains part of an artificial intelligence-powered bot farm leveraged by Russia to disseminate disinformation since 2022, BleepingComputer reports.
Such a bot farm, established by a Russia Today deputy editor-in-chief and an officer of the Russian Federal Security Service, involved the utilization of the Meliorator AI software to facilitate the creation of social media accounts purporting to be from individuals around the world that spread false narratives to the U.S., Ukraine, Germany, Poland, Spain, Israel, and the Netherlands, according to the FBI. "Today's actions represent a first in disrupting a Russian-sponsored Generative AI-enhanced social media bot farm. Russia intended to use this bot farm to disseminate AI-generated foreign disinformation, scaling their work with the assistance of AI to undermine our partners in Ukraine and influence geopolitical narratives favorable to the Russian government," said FBI Director Christopher Wray.
