Fake AI Videos Linked to Russia Are Targeting Senate Candidates

Fake videos believed to be made with artificial intelligence and tied to Russia are spreading lies about two Democratic candidates running for U.S. Senate seats. The videos use real people's names and photos without their permission to make false claims. Experts say the videos are part of a larger effort by foreign groups to confuse American voters before midterm elections. This kind of dishonest content is called disinformation, which means information that is meant to mislead people on purpose.

One of the targets is Sherrod Brown, who is running for a Senate seat in Ohio. A fake video about him looks like a TV news report and shows pictures of a woman named Haya Akbik. Akbik once worked as an intern for Brown, but she never said the things the video claims she said. She told The Associated Press that the statements in the video are completely made up.

Akbik was shocked and upset when she learned about the video. She said it hurts both her own reputation and Senator Brown's campaign. 'It's my name, it's my reputation, making this allegation, and it's just completely false,' she said. She added that the video is harmful because it damages someone she once worked for. She also said this situation shows why Congress needs to create laws to stop the spread of harmful AI content online.

The second target is James Talarico, who is running for a Senate seat in Texas. The fake video about him is set up to look like a former student is speaking directly to the camera and making accusations. A spokesperson for Talarico said powerful people are using AI deepfakes, foreign bots, and conspiracy theories to attack him because they cannot beat him with the truth. Deepfakes are videos made with AI that can make it look and sound like a real person said or did something they never actually did.

The social media platform X took down the posts that first shared these videos and suspended the accounts that posted them. However, copies of the videos were still being shared online, with some posts getting hundreds of shares. This shows how hard it is to stop false information from spreading, especially when an election is just days away. Once disinformation gets online, it can travel very fast before anyone can stop it.

Experts say these videos look a lot like ones made by a Russian network called Storm-1516. That same network made fake videos targeting Kamala Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz back in 2024. Darren Linvill, a professor at Clemson University who studies media and how it can be faked, said the new videos likely came from the same group. He found that the accounts sharing the new videos had also shared old Storm-1516 content before.

A professor at Dartmouth College named Hany Farid also studied the videos. He said his analysis showed that both videos were likely created or changed using AI technology. He noted that the video targeting Brown is a fairly low-tech fake, while the one targeting Talarico appears to be fully generated by AI. Farid said this kind of disinformation released close to Election Day fits a pattern he has seen before. The Russian Embassy in Washington did not respond when asked for a comment, and Russia has denied interfering in U.S. elections in the past.