By Jonathan Landay and David Brunnstrom
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Russia has generated more AI content to influence the U.S. presidential election than any other foreign power as part of its broader effort to boost Republican candidate Donald Trump over Democrat Kamala Harris, a U.S. intelligence official said on Monday.
The official from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), speaking on condition of anonymity, made the comment in a briefing to reporters on the alleged use of AI by Russia and other countries to influence the Nov. 5 vote.
AI content produced by Moscow is “consistent with Russia’s broader efforts to boost the former president’s (Trump) candidacy and denigrate the vice president (Harris) and the Democratic Party, including through conspiratorial narratives,” he said.
Russia previously has denied interfering in the U.S. election.
The ODNI official said that Russia is generating more AI content to influence the election than any other country, but did not provide a figure for the volume of the AI content Moscow has produced.
“Russia is a much more sophisticated actor in the influence space in general,” the official said, adding that Moscow has a better understanding than other U.S. rivals of how American elections work and the states to target with its influence operations.
China has been using AI content in an attempt to influence how it is perceived worldwide, but not to sway the outcome of the U.S. election, the official said.
“China is using AI in broader influence operations seeking to shape global views of China and amplify divisive U.S. political issues,” the official said. “We are not yet seeing China use AI for any specific operations targeting U.S. election outcomes.”
Iranian influence actors have used AI to help generate posts for social media and “write inauthentic news articles for websites that claim to be real news sites,” the official said.
The content created by the Iranian actors is in English and Spanish and have targeted American voters “across the political spectrum on polarizing issues” such as Israel and the conflict in Gaza, and on the presidential candidates, the official said.
Iran has previously denied interfering in the U.S. vote.
