How Meta is battling AI-generated Russian misinformation ahead of the US election

• Meta said Russia is the top source of misinformation efforts in the world.
• Russian operators are now using GenAI to influence people with fake news articles.
• Meta said Russia will likely focus on influencing the US election in favor of its war in Ukraine.

Russia has been using social media to influence international politics for years. Now, artificial intelligence is bolstering its efforts.

In a newly released security report, Meta identified Russia as the "number one source" of global coordinated inauthentic behavior (or CIB) efforts. The nation has at least 39 "covert influence operations," Meta said.

The Russian influence operations used generative AI to create personas for fake journalists and publish stories on fictitious news sites with distorted information from authentic articles, Meta said in its report.

While past Russian efforts to influence US politics relied on hot-button social and cultural issues in a given country to gain traction, the current "deceptive campaign" is mostly focused on Russia's war in Ukraine, for which Russian operators are trying to rally support, the Meta report said.

Russia has had a frosty relationship with Meta since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Facebook pulled all advertising in Russia and blocked Russian ads shortly after the invasion. Months later, Russia categorized Meta as an extremist and terrorist organization.

"Between now and the US elections in November, we expect Russia-based operations to promote supportive commentary about candidates who oppose aid to Ukraine and criticize those who advocate for aiding its defenses," the Meta report said. "This could take the shape of blaming economic hardships in the US on providing financial help to Ukraine, painting Ukraine's government as unreliable, or amplifying voices expressing pro-Russia views on the war and its prospects."

Meta said it targets and removes more deceptive posts and accounts that rely heavily on AI or are run by contractors in for-hire deception campaigns. Neither has been particularly effective at avoiding detection, Meta said, referring to the operations as "low-quality, high-volume" with lapses in operational security.

"GenAI-powered tactics provide only incremental productivity and content-generation gains to the threat actors, and have not impeded our ability to disrupt their influence operations," the Meta report said. "In fact, we continue to see real people calling these networks out as trolls, as they struggle to engage authentic audiences."

Are you a current or former Meta employee with a story to tell? Contact this reporter at kbalevic@businessinsider.com with tips.