A pro-Russia disinformation campaign has emerged, leveraging consumer AI tools to create vast amounts of manipulated content focused on global tensions, particularly targeting elections, Ukraine, and immigration. Operating since 2023, the campaign, known as Operation Overload or Matryoshka, has produced not only videos but also pictures, QR codes, and fake websites. The output dramatically rose from 230 unique pieces between July 2023 and June 2024 to 587 pieces in subsequent months, illustrating how accessible AI has allowed for scalable and sophisticated propaganda techniques.
The campaign, known by many names including Operation Overload and Matryoshka, has been operating since 2023 and has been aligned with the Russian government by multiple groups, including Microsoft and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
Between September 2024 and May 2025, the amount of content being produced by those running the campaign has increased dramatically and is receiving millions of views around the world.
The researchers identified 230 unique pieces of content promoted by the campaign between July 2023 and June 2024; however, in the last eight months, Operation Overload churned out a total of 587 unique pieces of content.
The spike in content was driven by consumer-grade AI tools that are available for free online, allowing for the production of multiple pieces of content pushing the same story.
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