As war with Russia drags on, ultrarealistic AI videos attempt to portray Ukrainian soldiers in peril

The videos began to circulate on social media in early November: Ukrainian soldiers appearing to weep and surrender on the front lines

The videos began to circulate on social media in early November: Ukrainian soldiers appearing to weep and surrender on the front lines.

To the naked eye, they look real, mirroring many of the videos that have emerged from the region during years of conflict. Few have telltale signs of manipulation.

But Aleksei Gubanov, a popular Russian livestreamer who now lives in New York, immediately recognized something fishy: his own face.

“At first I didn’t take it seriously, but soon I noticed how quickly the view count was growing and, even worse, how many people believed these videos were real,” Gubanov said of the videos he saw. “Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of users were leaving comments expressing condolences to the supposedly Ukrainian soldiers in the videos and directing anger toward the Ukrainian leadership.”

Gubanov, who streams video games and chatting on Twitch and fled Russia due to his criticism of President Vladimir Putin, has never served in the armed forces, let alone in the Ukrainian army. What his followers had flagged was an AI-generated video that used his likeness to spread a false narrative about morale among Ukrainian troops.