"Painted victories". How the Russian military is fabricating "achievements" on the front line using artificial intelligence
Russian army units have begun actively using artificial intelligence tools to create fake photos and videos intended to show their "advancement" on the front.
"Drawn victories." How the Russian military is using artificial intelligence to fake "achievements" at the front
The BBC Ukrainian Service's sources within the command of the Ukrainian Armed Forces confirm this situation.
At the same time, they noted that the main tactic of the Russian troops now is "infiltration." This means that separate groups of two or three, sometimes four or five fighters, slip behind Ukrainian positions, hide in some building or shelter, and after a while, appear in front of a drone camera holding a Russian flag.
Once such footage is captured, the Russian Ministry of Defense adds this settlement to the list of "captured territories" — even though Ukrainian search and strike groups quickly eliminate the small number of enemy troops that have entered the area.
Small assault groups cannot always reach their designated destination. In such situations, the Russian military resorts to falsification. Using artificial intelligence, they "draw" their fighters as if they are standing in the allegedly captured village or town.
"Then it turns out that the Russian military has 'taken' villages located 7-10 km away from the front line. In reality, they haven't even come close to these villages," a Ukrainian soldier serving in the Sumy direction said in an interview with the BBC.
Such fake reports about the "advance" of Russian troops have also been published from the Donetsk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, and Lyman directions. A video showing a Russian soldier "standing" in the Svyatohirsk settlement is a clear example of this. On September 1, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that this town had been captured.
The signs of artificial intelligence are clearly visible in the footage — a masked soldier is edited into a photo depicting one of the streets of Svyatohirsk.
The American think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) studied this topic and found that in recent months, the Russian military and bloggers have published dozens of videos about the "successes" of the Russian army.
According to ISW experts, such photos and videos are being prepared to create the impression that Russia has the initiative at the front and to present the situation as if the Ukrainian defense line is collapsing across the entire theater of military operations.