Deepfakes are Russia’s new 'weapon of war'

ABOUT A MONTH AGO, Michael McFaul, a former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, issued a strange warning. He claimed someone was impersonating him using a phone number with a Washington, D.C. area code, trying to speak with associates on a video call.

“You will see an AI-generated ‘deep fake’ that looks and talks like me,” he said on Twitter, using a term coined in 2017 to describe imagery that has been deceptively edited to alter a person’s identity. The tech has been used to place Vladimir Putin on SNL for laughs among other amusements. Scammers have pretended to be CEOs and Navy admirals to trick people out of cash. But this seemed different; it was a live video call.

“It is not me,” McFaul said. “This is a new Russian weapon of war. Be careful.”

McFaul later said he wasn’t entirely sure who was behind the calls. But given his passionate support of Ukraine in its fight to eject Russia after eight years of war, he believed it was “obviously designed to undermine Ukraine’s diplomatic and war efforts.”

Was it the work of pranksters? Russian spies? One thing was clear: It wasn’t the first time. Since the Feb. 24 invasion, several Kremlin adversaries have been targeted by deepfakes.

As Russia attacked Kyiv and multiple cities on March 2, Ukrainian intelligence warned that a deep fake “provocation” was coming. And sure enough, on March 16 a deceptively-edited video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeared on Ukrainian national news. Lay down your arms and surrender, the fake Zelenskyy ordered in a video that was a big hit on Russian social media. The crude deepfake was quickly debunked, but one researcher suspected it was “the tip of the iceberg.” He was right.

In April, several lawmakers in Europe were duped by “individuals who appear to be using deepfake filters to imitate Russian opposition figures during video calls.” Latvian lawmaker Rihards Kols was one of those fooled, though you can hardly blame him. Even the man he thought he was speaking with, Leonid Volkov, was impressed by his computer-generated doppelgänger.

Rihards