Sustained AI-Driven Russian Disinformation Campaigns Doppelgänger, Storm-1516, and Matryoshka Reportedly Disrupting German Federal Elections

December 6, 2024

Leading up to Germany’s February 23, 2025, federal election, the alleged Russian Doppelgänger, Storm-1516, and Matryoshka (Operation Overload) disinformation campaigns have reportedly been deploying AI-generated deepfake videos and fake news sites to spread false claims about German politicians and public figures. AI-powered bots have allegedly been amplifying the content across social media. Researchers suggest the campaign sought to erode trust in Germany’s democratic process. Germany's domestic intelligence agency (BfV) described the scale as unprecedented.

Alleged deployer

storm-1679, storm-1516, russian-government, operation-overload, matryoshka, john-mark-dougan, doppelganger

Alleged developer

unknown-entities-related-to-doppelganger, unknown-deepfake-technology-developers

Alleged harmed parties

unnamed-british-police-officer, unnamed-american-university-presidents, robert-habeck, olaf-scholz, natalie-finch, german-voters, german-politicians, german-federal-election-integrity, general-public-of-germany, friedrich-merz, electoral-integrity, democracy, academics-targeted-by-storm-1679, academics-targeted-by-operation-overload, academics-targeted-by-matryoshka

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.