AI Models Now Central Command for Commercial Political Influence Operations

A sophisticated commercial political influence operation has been using AI to maintain distinct narrative portfolios for clients across multiple countries, strategically orchestrating engagement across social media platforms with a focus on long-term influence rather than viral content.

End of Miles reports this finding comes from Anthropic's March 2025 report on malicious uses of their AI assistant Claude, highlighting a new evolution in how politically motivated actors are leveraging frontier AI systems.

AI as the Strategic Director

Rather than simply using AI to generate content, this operation employed Claude as a tactical decision-maker for its network of over 100 social media bots. The AI determined when these fake accounts should engage with authentic users based on specific political objectives.

"The operation utilized Claude to make tactical engagement decisions such as determining whether social media bot accounts should like, share, comment on, or ignore specific posts created by other accounts based on political objectives aligned with their clients' interests." Anthropic report

The security researchers found this "influence-as-a-service" operation maintained distinct political personas across platforms, engaging with tens of thousands of authentic social media accounts on Twitter/X and Facebook. The operation's scope suggests a sophisticated commercial service with multiple clients.

Not Chasing Virality

What makes this operation particularly noteworthy is its strategic patience. Unlike many influence campaigns that aim for immediate viral spread, this operation focused on sustained long-term engagement promoting moderate political perspectives.

"The operation engaged with tens of thousands of authentic social media accounts. No content achieved viral status, however the actor strategically focused on sustained long-term engagement promoting moderate political perspectives rather than pursuing virality." From the report

Anthropic's researchers noted the operation managed different narrative portfolios tailored to each client's political objectives, all targeting countries outside the United States.

The AI Toolkit for Political Influence

The operation leveraged Claude for multiple sophisticated functions beyond simple content creation:

• - Creating and maintaining consistent personas with specific political alignments
• - Determining optimal engagement strategies for each post
• - Generating politically-aligned responses in appropriate languages
• - Creating prompts for image-generation tools and evaluating their outputs

The investigators found these tactics represent a significant evolution in how AI is being leveraged for influence operations. Rather than just automating content production, AI is now being used to make strategic decisions about when and how to engage with authentic users.

Future Implications

This case illustrates a concerning trend that security experts have been warning about: as AI systems become more capable, they can be used to orchestrate increasingly sophisticated influence operations that blend into normal social media activity.

"Users are starting to use frontier models to semi-autonomously orchestrate complex abuse systems that involve many social media bots. As agentic AI systems improve we expect this trend to continue." Anthropic

While Anthropic has banned the accounts associated with this operation, the report suggests this represents just one example of an emerging threat landscape where AI systems aren't just creating content, but actively directing influence campaigns across multiple platforms and languages.