Pro-China deepfake 'spamouflage' campaign
Deepfake TV anchors talking positively about China while sowing disquiet in the US, UK, Taiwan, Australia, Japan and other countries have been discovered and taken down. The TV anchors were supposedly working for 'Wolf News' and had been created using technology created and owned by London-based AI video creation platform Synthesia . The anchors are thought to be the first known instance of ' deepfake'-generated videos being used as part of a state-aligned influence campaign. The discovery was first made (pdf) by Graphika, which had been tracking a Chinese covert influence operation named 'Spamouflage'. Synthesia later suspended the accounts of the people who had created the fake anchors on the basis that they had violated its terms of service . ➕ September 2023. Meta said (pdf) it had removed 7,704 Facebook accounts, 954 pages, 15 groups and 15 Instagram accounts identified for violating the company’s inauthentic behaviour policy. It also said that a large number of accounts appeared to be running from shared locations in China, marked by bursts of activity during the morning and afternoon, with breaks for lunch and supper. Deepfake Deepfakes (a portmanteau of ' deep learning ' and 'fake') are images, videos, or audio which are edited or generated using artificial intelligence tools, and which may depict real or non-existent people. They are a type of synthetic media. Source: Wikipedia 🔗 System 🤖 Synthesia AI video generation Operator: Government of China ; Dragonbridge; Spamouflage; Storm 1376 Developer: Government of China; Synthesia Country: Australia; Japan; Taiwan; UK; USA Sector: Politics Purpose: Promote Chinese interests Technology: Deepfake - video; Machine learning Issue: Mis/disinformation I nvestigations, assessments, audits 👁️ Meta (2023). Q2 Adversarial Threat Report Australian Strategic Policy Institute (2023). Gaming public opinion (pdf) Graphika (2023). Deepfake Till You Make It
- Date it happened
- 2023-02-01
- Organisation involved
- Government of China
- Product, system or model
- Synthesia
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