On July 1, 2024 a story was published on the Vérité Cachée, a pop-up French website, claiming that Olena Zelenska, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s wife, bought a new extravagant Bugatti during a trip to Paris in June. The article featured a video of a man claiming to work at the dealership, but both the video and the website were fake. Vérité Cachée is part of a network of websites associated with the Russian government, spreading propaganda and misinformation to audiences in Europe and the US, using AI technology. Numerous Russian media outlets covered the story, citing Vérité Cachée as a source, and it was widely spread on pro-Kremlin channels and bot accounts on X.
Despite Bugatti debunking the story, it gained traction on Elon Musk’s X and was shared by pro-Kremlin accounts before being picked up by a figure with a large following. English-language websites then reported on the story, and it quickly became a trending topic and top search result on Google. The use of AI in disinformation campaigns undermines public trust in media and institutions, allowing bad actors to exploit vulnerabilities in the internet to spread false narratives faster and more efficiently than before. Vérité Cachée is part of a larger network of websites run by John Mark Dougan, a former U.S. Marine living in Moscow, who works with Russian think tanks and appears regularly on Russian state TV stations. His media network relies heavily on AI-generated content to make disinformation appear more convincing, and making it difficult for the average person to discern truth from falsehood.
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