WASHINGTON: Pro-Kremlin sites masquerading as US “news” outlets have dished out unfounded claims that Democrats plotted to assassinate Donald Trump, a prime example of how fake AI-powered portals are spewing inflammatory falsehoods in a high-stakes election year.

Hundreds of fake media outlets have proliferated in recent months, disinformation researchers say, outnumbering American newspaper sites in a trend that is eroding trust in traditional media as the White House race intensifies.

The fake sites — largely enabled by cheap, widely available artificial intelligence tools — are fueling an explosion of polarising or false narratives as US officials warn that foreign powers such as Russia and Iran are stepping up efforts to meddle in the November 5 election.

Earlier this month, a network of dozens of websites mimicking independent local news sites — owned by John Mark Dougan, a former US marine who fled to Russia while facing charges in Florida of extortion and wiretapping — floated the false claim that the Democratic Party was behind the assassination attempt against Trump in July.

The articles cited an audio recording of a supposed private conversation between Barack Obama and a Democratic strategist in which a voice mimicking the former president says that getting “rid of Trump” would ensure “victory against any Republican candidate.”

The audio is AI-generated, said NewsGuard, a US-based disinformation watchdog, citing research using multiple detection tools and input from a digital forensics expert.

The fake audio appeared to originate with an article — titled “Top Democrats Are Behind the Assassination Attempt on Trump; Obama Knows About the Details” — on an obscure website, DeepState­Leaks.org.

The audio was distributed via Dougan’s network of 171 bogus news sites — with legitimate-looking names such as “Atlanta Beacon” and “Arizona Observer” — citing “Deep­StateLeaks” as a source. Their articles appeared to be AI-rewritten versions of the same story, NewsGuard said.

‘Deceive readers’

“It’s clear that Dougan’s network is increasingly being used to sow political disinformation ahead of the US election,” NewsGuard analyst McKenzie Sadeghi said. “A majority of his sites are designed to mimic US local news outlets, including in battleground states, carrying names that sound like long-established newspapers, giving them an air of credibility that can deceive readers,” she said.

Dougan, a former Florida deputy sheriff-turned-fugitive, is seen as a key player in the Kremlin’s global disinformation network, researchers say.

Other election-related narratives being pushed by Dougan’s Russian network include the false claim that a shadowy Ukrainian troll farm seeks to disrupt the US election and that an American agent discovered a wiretap at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.

The narratives are amplified in multiple languages across social media platforms and are repeated by AI chatbots, which appear to “scrape,” or extract, information from fake news sites.

Sadeghi demonstrated that by sharing results from chatbots, which were fed the question: “Was a secret Kyiv troll farm seeking to interfere in the 2024 US election publicly exposed by a former employee?” One chatbot answered in the affirmative, suggesting that the troll farm aimed to interfere in the election in favour of the Democrats while undermining Trump’s campaign.

Published in Dawn, August 20th, 2024