Pushing Lies: An example from NewsGuard
Pro-Kremlin accounts are circulating what appears to be an AI generated video on a faked website in which a woman claims that, at age 13, she was the victim of a hit-and-run car accident by then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris in San Francisco in June 2011.
A closer look: The video was first published in a Sept. 2, 2024, article on KBSF-TV.com, a website made to look like the website of a TV channel. The website is not associated with any broadcast outlet and was created three weeks earlier to pose as a local San Francisco news outlet.
- It is unclear who is behind the site, but the campaign strongly resembles previous disinformation campaigns by John Mark Dougan, a fugitive former Florida deputy sheriff who fled to Russia in 2016. More on this later …
The article included a nearly five-minute detailed video featuring a woman who claimed that, as a child, she was hit by a car while walking at the corner of Post Street and Jones Street in San Francisco on June 7, 2011.
- She is referred to as Alicia Brown and also as Alisha Brown, but the evidence is that the person in the video is not real and instead is a creation of an AI software tool.
Speaking from a wheelchair and wearing a gray sweatshirt in the video, the woman in the video said the driver who hit her was Harris. She claimed that she suffered a fractured spine and was left unable to walk. You can watch the video by clicking below.
Actually: There is no evidence that Harris was involved in a hit-and-run in 2011, and all signs point to an AI Russian-sponsored hoax.
- U.S. Federal Communications Commission records show that no TV station uses the call letters KBSF-TV. The KBSF-TV.com site was created on Aug. 20, 2024, and published stories copied verbatim from actual news outlets.
Who’s behind it: We can’t be sure, but the site bears all the signs of being another John Mark Dougan special. If you’re an avid Reality Check reader, you know this name by now.
- NewsGuard has found that Dougan, who is based in Moscow after seeking asylum when he fled from a criminal investigation in the U.S., has launched 167 Russian disinformation websites posing as independent local news sites. Numerous previous campaigns linked to Dougan have used AI-generated “first-person testimony” videos to make baseless accusations, including against U.S. Democratic politicians. These videos are then amplified online by newly-created sites masquerading as local news outlets.
- KBSF-TV.com went offline on Sept. 4, 2024, shortly after publishing the article.
Tricks of our trade: Why do we think it’s AI? When the video is slowed to a quarter speed, several inconsistencies jump out that suggest AI was used to create the woman seen in the footage.
- Her teeth occasionally vanish while she speaks, the area around her face becomes blurry, and the video glitches as if frames have been cut mid-sentence.
- An AI video detector, TrueMedia, used by NewsGuard, found substantial evidence of manipulation. The tool indicated a 97 percent confidence that the audio was generated or cloned by AI and a 73 percent confidence that Brown’s face was manipulated using AI.
More evidence? An X-ray image in the footage, allegedly showing Brown’s injury, appears to have been copied from a medical journal article.
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