Russia covertly targeted Africans with AI-generated posts: France

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A clandestine pro-Russian online operation targeted French speakers in Africa with "deceptive" AI-generated posts in a campaign likely directed by Moscow, a French government agency said Thursday.

Moscow has sought to expand its influence in Africa in recent years, including in former French colonies, with campaigns using grass-roots activists and social media.

The Wagner group played a key role but Moscow has apparently moved to centralise  control of information operations since the group was disbanded and reorganised following the death of its leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in a 2023 plane crash.

France's Viginum agency, which counters foreign disinformation campaigns, linked Moscow's "clandestine digital activities" to a Russian news agency openly operating in Africa called African Initiative.

African Initiative has become "a key element in the restructuring and implementation of Russia's information and influence strategy in Africa" after Prigozhin's death, the report said.

Its "activities are likely directed by the Russian state apparatus, particularly the Russian intelligence services", Viginum said.

The Russian news agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

With a Moscow address, African Initative publishes in five languages including English and French and runs journalism courses and press trips in Africa.

Presented as an independent publication, its reporters include the former press secretary for Wagner's office in Saint Petersburg.

Viginum said the news agency appeared to have set up an operation, which it called "deceptive", posting AI-generated images, text and video and using "malign techniques" to boost views.

The operation using pseudo-media outlets was "likely" run by a web marketing company subcontracted by African Initiative, the report said.

The websites ran several thousand articles, largely on non-political topics such as cinema, sport and music, in an apparent bid to get linked to by other media, the report said.

Dozens of automated accounts also disseminated links to the sites on blogs, with posts appearing to be AI-generated and sometimes translated from Russian, Viginum said.

Despite the complex structure, the operation did not rack up many views and the sites appear to have been inactive since December, the French agency said.

Viginum released its findings after Meta in August 2024 said it had removed Facebook accounts targeting French-speaking African countries that promoted Russia's role in th region and critised France.

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, later said it had banned accounts originating in Russia using its language models to generate images, comments and articles in English and French, posted on sites posing as news media in Africa.