Russia is using artificial intelligence to fabricate frontline victories: military personnel are posting deep fakes of captured cities they don't actually control, the FT reports, citing analysts and sources close to Putin.
One example is dobrophilia. In mid-October, Russian commanders reported to Putin that they had captured the city. The Russian Ministry of Defense released a video with soldiers and flags among the rubble. However, in one of the frames, the flag suddenly changes position. "Without a doubt, this breach is fake," said Ruslan Levev, head of the OSINT group's conflict intelligence team.
The same thing happened with Billy Kolodiaz in Kharkiv region. In a video posted on July 27 by the military blogger Dibagan, a soldier with a flag grows unnaturally and then disappears. A week later, the Russian Ministry of Defense claimed that Russian troops had entered the village, although Ukraine's armed forces reported that the enemy was still 10 km away from it.
The publication writes about at least 35 videos from Russian units and military bloggers that were apparently created or modified using AI. Such false reports force the commanders to advance to areas from which their units have already retreated and lead to new losses.
The scale of the exaggerations is shown by the numbers: Putin claimed to have conquered 6,500 square kilometers since the beginning of the year, while independent analysts counted a maximum of 1,500 square kilometers. Furthermore, the deep fakes will become more difficult to uncover, analysts warn.