Russian propagandists created a deepfake video using AI to falsely show a France 24 news anchor reporting that Ukraine planned to assassinate French President Emmanuel Macron, spreading disinformation across social media platforms.
Russian propagandists created a deepfake video using artificial intelligence technology that falsely depicted France 24 news anchor Julien Fanciulli reporting that Ukraine had planned to assassinate French President Emmanuel Macron during his visit to Kiev. The deepfake was created by digitally altering a legitimate France 24 news broadcast from February 12, 2024, where Fanciulli was actually discussing the Israel-Gaza conflict. The AI-generated audio made it appear that the anchor was announcing that French secret services had intercepted a Ukrainian assassination plot against Macron. The fake video began circulating on February 13, 2024, on pro-Russian Telegram channels and VKontakte (Russia's equivalent of Facebook), before spreading to X (formerly Twitter) and other social media platforms. The disinformation was amplified when former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev shared the false allegations on X. Multiple fact-checking organizations, including France 24's own verification team, confirmed the video was a deepfake by analyzing lip-sync inconsistencies and robotic-sounding voice patterns. Detection tools indicated the video was fake with a confidence score of 0.943 out of 1.0. The deepfake was part of a broader Russian disinformation campaign to undermine support for Ukraine and damage relationships between Ukraine and its Western allies.
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.
AI system
Due to a decision or action made by an AI system
Intentional
Due to an expected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed