AI-generated deepfake music videos featuring fake celebrity endorsements of Burkina Faso's president Ibrahim Traore were created and distributed across social media platforms as part of a coordinated disinformation campaign.
In March-May 2024, at least 294 AI-generated deepfake music videos were published on YouTube featuring fake celebrity endorsements of Burkina Faso's president Ibrahim Traore. The videos purported to show celebrities like Beyonce, Rihanna, R. Kelly, Selena Gomez, and Eminem singing a song called 'God Protect Ibrahim Traore' praising the military leader who came to power in a coup in September 2022. These poor-quality deepfakes were distributed across 127 YouTube channels and garnered over 8.6 million views total. The videos were clearly AI-generated, with deformed faces, illegible text, and YouTube's 'altered or synthetic content' labels. Despite being obviously fake, influential social media users with millions of followers shared the content, including Ghanaian influencer Nancy Blaq with 2.7 million followers. A Nigerian AI video creator admitted to making the R. Kelly version for $1,000 and claimed to have created most of the popular pro-Traore videos. The campaign targeted English-speaking audiences and coincided with Burkina Faso's official communication campaign promoting Traore in late April 2024. Researchers identified this as a coordinated disinformation campaign designed to boost Traore's international image while his security policies were failing domestically.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
Using AI systems to conduct large-scale disinformation campaigns, malicious surveillance, or targeted and sophisticated automated censorship and propaganda, with the aim of manipulating political processes, public opinion, and behavior.
Human
Due to a decision or action made by humans
Intentional
Due to an expected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed