Russian bots inflate views of fake AI clips of celebrities

Bloomberg News reports that Russian bots are inflating the view counts of fake AI celebrity videos ahead of the US midterms.

Researchers describe the clips as low-effort: real footage, a cloned voice over it, a stolen news logo. Bloomberg notes that AI has made fakes cheap and quick to produce. The reach comes from the bot layer, not the video, which is the part creators should notice.

Bloomberg reviewed 130 videos and doctored newspaper front pages that the network published from September 10 to October 9, most of them flagged by the anonymous research group Antibot4Navalny. Graphika and dTeam corroborated the material, according to Bloomberg.

The view counts are the giveaway. Counts on Matryoshka posts can jump as high as 200,000 within the first hour and then plateau, a pattern Antibot4Navalny flagged. A post from September 29 carrying a false claim about Texas Senate candidate James Talarico drew 50,839 views and one retweet in 20 minutes, then fewer than 700 views over the next three hours. A September 24 video claiming Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar took $72 million in suspicious donations, more than five times what she has raised, showed 155,300 views with two likes and no retweets.

The clips put fabricated words into the mouths of real performers. Bloomberg names actors and musicians including Robert De Niro, Julia Roberts and Cher among those faked. AFP reported that footage came from a 2023 Gucci campaign and from Cameo recordings, overdubbed with cloned audio. None of the performers said or did what the clips show. Actor Eric Roberts told AFP that the statements "are not my words and do not represent my beliefs." CNN said its logo was used without authorization and that the videos "are not CNN content and have no affiliation with CNN."

False candidate claims followed. One clip carrying an ABC News logo alleged that Talarico paid OnlyFans models, which a Talarico spokesperson denied. Another, with CBS News branding, claimed the IRS found Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff owns eight undeclared properties. Bloomberg reports there is no evidence for it.

Russia has used social media to influence US elections since 2016, according to US intelligence assessments cited by Bloomberg. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue examined 135 pieces of Matryoshka content from January to March 2025 and found one fake, styled as E! News, that reached 4 million views. Musk and Donald Trump Jr. each reposted it.

X has taken down part of the network. Bloomberg found the platform suspended 80 percent of the accounts it saw promoting the midterm material and removed 10 more after Bloomberg flagged them. In an October 14 post, X said it had suspended more than 13,000 accounts tied to three suspected foreign influence operations linked to Iran, Russia and China. New accounts replace the suspended ones, Graphika's Jean le Roux told Bloomberg.

Researchers put the real audience near zero. Darren Linvill of Clemson University called the effort Russia's "first salvo" in AFP's coverage, and told MS NOW the campaign's audience is negligible.

Antibot4Navalny posts its Matryoshka tracking at x.com/antibot4navalny, and Graphika's September 21 assessment and ISD's Operation Overload dispatch are free to read.