U.S. and allies take down Russian ‘bot farm’ powered by AI | The effort drove nearly a thousand covert accounts on X
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/07/09/us-russia-bot-farm-propaganda-ai/
U.S. and allies take down Russian ‘bot farm’ powered by AI | The effort drove nearly a thousand covert accounts on X
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/07/09/us-russia-bot-farm-propaganda-ai/
19 Comments
“Today’s actions represent a first in disrupting a Russian-sponsored Generative AI-enhanced social media bot farm,” FBI Director Christopher A. Wray said in a statement. “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.”
Automated accounts with more detailed biographies posted original content, while a supporting cast of more generic accounts liked and reshared those posts.
The documents show that AI’s large language models have helped Russian propagandists scale their operation and help with translation, he said. It also helps them avoid detection software that looks for repeated use of the same internet protocol addresses and other identifiers.
But many other systems are operating already, and they will get better as they adapt for what is getting detected and what is getting by, Scott-Railton said. “This isn’t even the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “This is the drip of the iceberg.”
Putin-admirer Elon Musk is hosting a Russian botnet on his broken website, and there’s no charges or fines or investigation into what’s going on over there?
The bots are absolutely out of control on Twitter since Elon took over. Not surprised since Elon is such a Putin asskisser.
Extremely ironic that I see this post on my reddit feed and then right below it is a stampede of bot posts that I(as a mod) have to clean up.
X has to worry about “sophisticated AI bots” while reddit is freely encouraging the creation and operation of bot farms run by some unemployed folks in a third world country that use the 4d omega Einstein brain tactic of ‘copy pasting older posts and comments’. Something that reddit, as a multi Billion dollar company, can’t stop.
Pot calling the Kettle black.
1000 fake accounts is nothing on a popular social media platform.
Sorry, but Elon is just an rank amateur at running that company. Stick with engineering dude.
Wow, nearly 1000 you say?
Impressive!
(Unimpressed)
When they will take down US/UA bot farms powered by AI?
Ah no, they are the goddies one, because they are bringing the truth
Bots are still out in force on reddit encouraging misinformation and spreading fear.
Pffft. Elon Musk controls who sees your tweets and whose tweets you see.
I betcha he already has extremely powerful and subtle biases going on.
All he has to say is that he is striving for the middle.
The middle of the truth and the absurd, is the absurd. But I bet he is making the argument that the middle of the truth and the absurd is “fair”.
And with that Liars get all the advantage they need.
Oh yes only X has bots 🙄.
I’m sure reddit is fine and the mods are all nn bias.
While this is good news, 1000 accounts is nothing on X 🥲
Oh this is why they want to defund and dismantle the fbi. I meant it’s pretty obvious, to most of us.
Something tells me my follower count is going to drop drastically.
I read that US and aliens. Wasnt surprised, but curious. Time to take a break from reddit.
AI bot farms could be seen as a new form of warfare in the upcoming future. I fear that artificial intelligence could be used in a more deadly strategic tactic. Some drones that are being used in the Ukraine-Russia war are starting to implement AI technology. Imagine the catastrophic and detrimental effects that it could have on future societies. AI could give power leverage to anyone using it.
I am getting more and more bots following me all the time -a very noticeable increase in a few months. I block them all, but I can foresee that sometime soon I will give up doing this.
Whenever the discussion of AI taking jobs or killing all humans I muse about all of the shitty things that are going to happen way before then. Like as tools for malicious people to unleash on someone/something without being traceable to the criminal. Dear hacker trained AI, attack website <insert victim> without being traced back to a human.
What’s increasingly clear is that America’s cyber security defense is no match for their adversaries. So long as there are major breaches at huge companies of customer data just happening quite a lot and cryptocurrency theft and everything else, America’s losing this battle.
The United States doesn’t even have the cybersecurity professionals and the skills required to meet the demand. It doesn’t matter how many bought farms are taken down or how many plans are spoiled. It’s all the ones that get through that really show you the terrible State of affairs in cyber security.
Ironically pushing generative AI tools has actually made this worse.