cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/7449044
A new artificial intelligence (AI) agent could equip Europe to better defend itself against the barrage of Russian disinformation attacks.
Cipher is Canadian-developed AI software that has proven to accurately and quickly detect Russian disinformation targeting Canadian networks, on both the far right and the far left of the political spectrum.
Now that Cipher has passed the testing stage, the researchers are training the AI agent to distinguish those same narratives in the Russian language.
The researchers hope it can be rolled out in Europe for those at the forefront of efforts to combat Russian operations that sow distrust in Western democracies and institutions.
Marcus Kolga, who runs the foreign disinformation monitoring platform DisinfoWatch in Canada, tested Cipher to see how well it stood up to his 20 years of experience reporting on foreign interference.
"What would usually take, for an analysis piece, maybe half a day to a day, was really being crunched down to a few hours, and (it) was scarily accurate," says Kolga, who tested out Cipher in its early stages and still uses the AI agent to expedite his work.
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The tool uncovered persistent efforts to deliberately sway Canadian public opinion on Ukraine with the goal of eroding the support Kyiv receives from one of its staunchest allies.
Brian McQuinn, an associate professor in international studies at the University of Regina, is one of the project leads. He has been researching the role of social media in armed conflict.
McQuinn worked with Kolga on the 2023 report The Enemy of My Enemy, which detailed how Russia uses information operations to undermine Canadian support for Ukraine amid the Russian invasion.
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The Cipher project began three years ago under the AI safety research program at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR). McQuinn worked with project co-lead Matthew Taylor, an associate professor in computing science at the University of Alberta, who directed a five-person team of engineers in creating the sophisticated software.
Beyond mapping out where Russian disinformation is spreading online, with reports processed down to the last 24 hours, Cipher also shows trending themes.
This type of analysis provides experts with more detail on how Russian operations are shifting over any period of time.
"We are able to track and show on a day-to-day basis ... where are the Russian networks investing their limited resources (and) what themes they are targeting day in, day out, and how they are changing over the weeks and over the months," says McQuinn.
"It really shows you the extent to which they are responding to events almost in real time."
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Deceptive narratives are often disseminated by Russian state-controlled outlets such as RT and Sputnik, then amplified by social media influencers. From there, they spread across Canadian social networks, occasionally making their way into mainstream news coverage.
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The next challenge for the Cipher team is fine-tuning it to more accurately predict how Russian disinformation will spin the narrative around any expected events. Experts like Kolga can then get ahead of the attacks to suppress how far they could spread.
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