By Jean-Pierre A.
A new report released by AI company Anthropic has exposed how actors in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) used its Claude AI tool, to create pro-government content and a narrative defending Kinshasa in the ongoing conflict with neighbouring Rwanda.
The report, dubbed “Detecting and Countering Misuse of AI,” and published recently, discovered a network whose activities focused on the DRC and involved fake news websites.
“A close look at the network’s output revealed a heavy focus on the Democratic Republic of Congo, with 318 articles across all its fake news sites,” the report on the misuse of AI stated.
The researchers define influence operations as efforts to manipulate the information environment, including political, civic and public discourse, with the intent to deceive, distort or covertly influence the perceptions, beliefs or behaviours of individuals or groups, typically while concealing the activity’s origin, sponsorship or coordination.
The stories investigated typically supported the DRC government’s stance, specifically focusing on regional mineral deals and ongoing tensions with Rwanda.
This strategy matched the network’s audience growth. During its first few weeks, the vast majority of fake personas following its X accounts were tied to the DRC, while its DRC-specific news page became the most shared and popular account in the entire operation at that time.
According to Anthropic’s report, an X account presenting itself as a Congolese civilian “digital army” was also observed following several of the network’s accounts. However, the researchers said they found no evidence that the activity was directed by any government.
The report additionally found other activities involving information manipulation related to the DRC-Rwanda conflict. However, the report’s authors were not able to independently link them to any government.
“Our investigation found signals that showed the activity might reflect the interests of one or more customers with a stake in the current DRC-Rwanda conflict,” the researchers noted, adding: “We are not able to independently confirm which customers commissioned this content, and we found no evidence of direction by any government.”
The report also revealed unusual activity surrounding the DRC crisis.
“We detected signs of coordinated inauthentic behavior on September 11, 2025, when the network’s websites published almost identical articles about the DRC-Rwanda conflict within three minutes of each other,” the investigators noted.
“The actors modified the tone of each article to fit different regional audiences, while simultaneously coordinating the distribution of these links across numerous X accounts.”
