MOSCOW, October 6. /TASS/. A deep fake epidemic spread through Runet in September, with their number hitting a historic high accounting for 77% of the overall number for all of 2024, the Dialogue Regions organization told TASS.
"Runet has been seeing an explosive growth of deep fakes since April. And this trend continues unabated. As many as 63 deep fakes were exposed in August alone, or 77% of the overall number for entire 2024. In September, a total of 65 unique deep fake videos, a historic high, were detected. That means that we can expect a further growth of such videos," it said.
According to the organization, a total of 342 unique deep fakes were spotted from January to September 2025, an over four-fold increase compared to 2024 (84 deep fakes). "According to our forecasts, the number of deep fakes will jump five-fold by the end of 2025 compared to the last year," experts said.
Around 81% of deep fakes are generated with the use of the LipSync technology, which makes it possible to match lip movements on screen with any pre-recorded audios. "In 2025, 54 deep fakes, 17% of those on socially important issues, were generated by means of neural network diffusion models that can simultaneously generate video and audio. Such models can generate a deep fake video purely from a written prompt," they said, adding that two percent of disinformation videos were made by means of overlaying audio on an original video.
More and more people are seeing these deepfakes as well. "In 2025, some 55,000 deep fake copies were found, or 5.9 times as many as in all of 2024 (9,300). Based on this data, the number of views of such content amounted to 122.5 million this year, up 3.1 times on 2024," the organization said.
According to Sergey Maklakov, chief of Dialogue Regions’ anti-disinformation department, the number of unique deep fakes has been growing by 1.5-2 times each quarter since 2024. "This is explained among other things by the qualitative progress in video generation by neural networks. Deep fakes most often target regional governors and other officials (79% of all cases)," he said.
Cyberattack on governors
The biggest number of deep fakes (15 unique cases) targeted Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod Region bordering Ukraine. Other most cyberattacked governors are Igor Babushkin (Astrakhan Region, ten unique cases), Roman Busargin (Saratov Region, ten cases), Alexey Russkikh (Ulyanovsk Region, eight cases), Igor Artamonov (Lipetsk Region, eight cases), Alexey Besprozvannykh (Kaliningrad Region, seven deep fakes), Igor Kobzev (Irkutsk Region, seven deep fakes), Gleb Nikitin (Nizhny Novgorod Region, seven deep fakes), and head of Dagestan Sergey Melikov (six deep fakes). Apart from that, deep fakes featured Belarusian officials and Russian pop celebs.
According to experts, a deep fake can by spotted only with the use of professional tools. "A deep fake is generated on the basis of an original video by means of changing what a person on it is saying. The next spiral of the development of such socially dangerous content is improving the availability and quality of diffusion models when no original videos will be needed to generate a deep fake. This will seriously complicate fact-checking and technological detection," Dialogue Regions said, adding that technologies of countering deep fakes will be the focus of the 3rd International Forum Dialogue about Fakes 3.0 that will be held in Moscow on October 29.