By Andrew Goudsward and Christopher Bing
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S Justice Department said on Tuesday that it disrupted a Russian operation that used fake social media accounts enhanced by artificial intelligence to covertly spread pro-Kremlin messages in the United States and abroad.
The news comes four months before the U.S. presidential election, which security experts widely believe will be the target of both hacking and covert social media influence attempts by foreign adversaries. Senior U.S. officials have said publicly they are monitoring for schemes intended to disrupt the vote.
The alleged operation, according to prosecutors, was organized through a private intelligence organization based in Russia staffed by Russian intelligence officers and a senior employee of the Moscow-based, government-funded news outlet Russia Today, or RT.
A spokesperson for RT did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This private organization had designed a custom, AI-powered platform to create, control and manage hundreds of fake social accounts, which were made to look like real Americans, according to court documents.
In total, it created roughly 1,000 accounts on social media platform X. Those profiles have since been banned.
The accounts commonly posted pro-Kremlin talking points and criticized the Ukrainian government.
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward and Christopher BingEditing by Tomasz Janowski and Rod Nickel)