It is “highly likely” that ElevenLabs’ AI voice generation was used in a Russian influence operation
Generative AI contains a large number of well-documented pieces of information Misusefrom Preparing academic papers to Imitation of artists. Now, it appears to be emerging in state influence operations.
One recent campaign was “most likely” powered by commercial AI-powered voice generation products, including technology publicly released by Hot start Eleven laboratories, according to A Latest report From Massachusetts-based threat intelligence firm Recorded Future.
The report describes a Russia-linked campaign aimed at undermining European support for Ukraine, dubbed “Operation Undermining,” which prominently used artificial intelligence-generated voiceovers on fake or misleading “news” videos.
The videos, aimed at European audiences, attacked Ukrainian politicians as corrupt or questioned the usefulness of military aid to Ukraine, among other topics. For example, one video promoted: “Even jammers can’t save US Abrams tanks,” referring to the devices US tanks use to fend off incoming missiles – reinforcing the idea that sending high-tech armor to Ukraine is pointless. Behind him.
The report notes that video creators “most likely” used voice-generated AI, including ElevenLabs’ technology, to make their content appear more legitimate. To verify this, Recorded Future researchers sent the clips to the proprietary ElevenLabs artificial intelligence speech classifier, Which provides the ability for anyone to “detect if a track was created with ElevenLabs,” and get a match.
ElevenLabs did not respond to requests for comment. Although Recorded Future noted the potential use of several commercial AI-powered audio generation tools, it did not name any others besides ElevenLabs.
The benefit of AI voice generation was inadvertently demonstrated by influence campaign coordinators, who clumsily released some videos containing real human voice-overs with an “obvious Russian accent.” In contrast, the AI-generated voiceovers spoke in multiple European languages such as English, French, German and Polish, without any foreign-sounding accents.
According to Recorded Future, the AI also allowed the misleading clips to be quickly released in multiple languages spoken in Europe such as English, German, French, Polish, and Turkish (all languages, by the way). Supported By ElevenLabs.)
Recorded Future attributed this activity to the Social Design Agency, a Russia-based organization affiliated with the US government punished Last March, he was accused of operating “a network of more than 60 websites impersonating real news organizations in Europe, then using fake social media accounts to amplify the misleading content of the spoofed sites.” The US State Department said at the time that all this was done “on behalf of the government of the Russian Federation.”
Recorded Future concluded that the overall impact of the campaign on public opinion in Europe was minimal.
This isn’t the first time ElevenLabs products have been in the spotlight for alleged misuse. The company’s technology was behind a robocall impersonating President Joe Biden that urged voters not to get out and vote during the January 2024 primaries, a voice fraud detection company has concluded. According to Bloomberg. In response, ElevenLabs said it has released new security features such as automatically blocking politicians’ votes.
Eleven laboratories Ban “Unauthorized, malicious or deceptive impersonation.” He says It uses different tools to enforce this, such as automated and human moderation.
ElevenLabs has seen tremendous growth since its founding in 2022. And it has done so recently ARR increased to $80 million from $25 million less than a year ago, and it could soon be worth $3 billion, TechCrunch previously reported. Its investors include Andreessen Horowitz and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman.
