While the war between Ukraine and Russia continues, this war of ‘East’ and ‘West’ countries is not felt only in the physical world. Countries can especially actively fill social media with false information to justify/show their own actions. But the story behind some of the posts seen recently is the kind that will show how scary these manipulation movements are on social media.
Facebook and Twitter have been flooded with profiles posting anti-Ukrainian news and comments in recent days. Finally, it was understood that in one of these initiatives, which were determined to be originated from Russia and Belarus, misleading news about Ukraine was shared to the whole world by creating profiles that were portrayed as Ukrainian journalists. These fake profiles also appeared on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
They create a human face with artificial intelligence and make it look like a real person
The most prominent of the initiatives was the initiative of the Russians. In this attempt, the Russians were propagating on social media using a method that almost no one would notice: opening profiles of people who are not in real life. The Russians were creating journalist profiles with fake human faces and portraying Ukraine as a failed country. Afterwards, they shared on social media and redirected them to websites containing fake information.
According to the details released by Facebook, this group was using human faces produced by artificial intelligence. For example, the people you see in the photo above are not real, but human faces that can be easily created on the internet. Such photos can be easily found on platforms such as ‘This Person Does Not Exist’ and ‘Generated Photos’. Generated Photos, which is open to everyone, can even offer faces by ethnicity. In addition, by clicking this link, you can create an artificial human face according to all the features.
None of these belong to a real person.
Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and YouTube announced that the profiles detected related to this group have been removed. On the other hand, Russia-based social media platforms VK and OK, where profiles were created, have not taken any steps towards these profiles at the moment. It has also been determined that the profiles are also actively used in Telegram.
This last example proved how questioning we should approach the information you see on social media, especially in sensitive times like today.
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