WASHINGTON – The actor in the viral video clip denouncing the 2024 Olympics looks a lot like French President Emmanuel Macron. The images of rats, garbage and sewage, however, were created by artificial intelligence.
Portraying Paris as a crime-ridden cesspool, the video mocking the Games spread quickly on social media platforms like YouTube and X, helped by 30,000 social media bots linked to a notorious Russian disinformation group that has turned his attention to France before. Within days, the video was available in 13 languages thanks to fast AI translation.
“Paris, Paris, 1-2-3, go to the Seine and pee,” taunts an AI-enhanced singer while fake actor Macron dances in the background, apparently a reference to concerns about water quality in the River Seine where some competitions are happening.
Moscow is making its presence felt during the Paris Games, with groups linked to the Russian government using online disinformation and state propaganda to spread incendiary claims and attack the host country – showing what global events like the Olympics are now like important targets of online disinformation and advertising.
Over the weekend, Kremlin-linked disinformation networks took advantage of a split over Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, who faced unfounded questions about her gender. Unsubstantiated claims that she is a man or transgender surfaced after a controversial boxing association with ties to Russia said she failed an opaque eligibility test ahead of last year’s world boxing championships.
Russian networks expanded the debate, which quickly became a trending topic online. The British media, author JK Rowling and right-wing politicians like Donald Trump contributed to the flood. At its peak late last week, X users were posting about the boxer tens of thousands of times per hour, according to an analysis by PeakMetrics, a cyber company that tracks online narratives.
The boxing group behind the claims – the International Boxing Association – has been permanently banned from the Olympics, has a Russian president who is an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin and his biggest sponsor is the state energy company Gazprom. Questions have also been raised over the decision to disqualify Khelif last year after she defeated a Russian boxer.
Approve only a small number of Russian athletes will compete as neutrals It is banning them from team sports following the invasion of Ukraine all but guaranteed the Kremlin’s response, said Gordon Crovitz, co-founder of NewsGuard, a company that analyzes online misinformation. NewsGuard tracked dozens of examples of disinformation targeting the Paris Games, including the fake video clip.
Russia’s disinformation campaign targeting the Olympics stands out for its technical skill, Crovitz said.
“The difference now is that they are perhaps the most advanced users of generative AI models for evil purposes: fake videos, fake music, fake websites,” he said.
AI can be used to create realistic imagesaudio and video, translate texts quickly and generate culturally specific content that sounds and it looks like it was created by a human. The once laborious work of creating fake social media accounts or websites and writing conversational posts can now be done quickly and cheaply.
Another video amplified by Russia-based accounts in recent weeks claimed that the CIA and US State Department warned Americans not to use the Paris metro. No such warning was issued.
Russian state media trumpeted some of the same false and misleading content. Instead of covering athletic competitions, much of the Olympic Games coverage focused on crime, immigration, trash and pollution.
An article by the state news service Sputnik summed it up: “These Paris ‘games’ are going very well. Here’s an idea. Stop conceding the Olympics to the decadent and rotten West.”
Russia has used propaganda to disparage past Olympics, as it did when the then-Soviet Union boycotted the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. At the time, he distributed printed material to Olympic officials in Africa and Asia suggesting that non-white athletes would be hunted by racists in the USA, according to an analysis by Microsoft Threat Intelligence, a unit of the technology company that studies malicious online actors. .
Russia has also targeted previous Olympic Games with cyber attacks.
“If they cannot participate in or win the Games, then they will seek to undermine, defame and degrade the international competition in the minds of participants, spectators and global audiences,” Microsoft analysts concluded.
A message left with the Russian government was not immediately returned Monday.
Authorities in France have been in maximum alert for sabotage, cyber attacks or disinformation against the Games. A 40 year old man Russian man was arrested in France last month and accused of working for a foreign power to destabilize the European country before the Games.
Other nations, criminal groups, extremist organizations and scammers are also exploiting the Olympic Games to spread their own disinformation. Any global event like the Olympics — or a climate disaster or a major election — that attracts a lot of people online is likely to generate similar amounts of false and misleading claims, said Mark Calandra, executive vice president at CSC Digital Brand Services, a company that tracks activity. fraudulent online.
CSC researchers noticed a sharp increase in fake website domain name registrations ahead of the Olympics. In many cases, groups create websites that appear to provide Olympic content or sell Olympic merchandise.
Instead, they are designed to collect information about the user. Sometimes it’s a scammer looking to steal personal financial data. In others, the sites are used by foreign governments to collect information about Americans — or as a way to spread more disinformation.
“Bad actors look for these global events,” Calandra said. “Whether it’s positive events like the Olympics or more worrying events, these people use everyone’s heightened awareness and interest to try to exploit them.”
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