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The website and logo of U.S. artificial intelligence company Anthropic are displayed on a computer screen. / AP, Yonhap News

U.S. artificial intelligence startup Anthropic said it detected and blocked a commercial election manipulation platform that abused its generative AI model Claude to target Malaysian voters. The case suggests that a private IT company, rather than a state-backed group, had commercialized customized election interference services built on widely available AI.

Channel NewsAsia reported on Sept. 13 local time, citing a threat intelligence report recently released by Anthropic. According to the report, the operation made extensive use of around 1,000 fake social media accounts, a bogus news website called “Malaysia Pulse” and fabricated reports targeting opposition politicians.

Anthropic said it tracked and disrupted the operation from December 2025 through August and found that the system was linked to Istanbul-based IT company BBS Bilisim Teknolojileri. The company was found to have operated what amounted to “influence manipulation as a service,” selling access to the platform to outside clients.

At the core of the operation was a precision voter-targeting system. The operators combined real census and election data with the personal information of millions of voters to build a profiling system covering all 222 electoral constituencies in Malaysia. Claude was misused in the process to generate constituency-specific profiles and develop code for the manipulation infrastructure. Anthropic assessed that the system was carefully designed to inflame tensions over race, religion and royalty, commonly known in Malaysia as the “3R” issues.

The platform extended across the online ecosystem. More than 1,000 fake accounts created on X, formerly Twitter, regularly refreshed their IP addresses and internet cookies to evade platform monitoring. Anthropic said it found one case in which a request was made to artificially generate around 1 million views for Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s account. The report, however, did not identify who made the request, and neither any direct connection to the prime minister’s office nor the credibility of the figure was independently verified.

The operation also used a fake news outlet to shape online narratives. The bogus website “Malaysia Pulse,” launched in May, scraped and repackaged reporting from local media using AI and published the material under fictitious bylines. It also republished content from Chinese and Russian state media, including Xinhua, CGTN and Sputnik, without attribution, presenting it as independent reporting. A number of fabricated exposé-style reports targeting opposition politicians and civil society groups were also produced, though specific targets were not disclosed.

The operation’s actual impact, however, appears to have been limited. Anthropic said it found no conclusive evidence that the network had deeply penetrated genuine local online communities. It also identified signs that the operators had attempted to secure a service contract with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, or MCMC, but found no evidence that any contract was actually signed. Anthropic also said it could not establish a direct link between the operation and any specific election.

Following the allegations, the MCMC said it was “taking the contents of the report seriously” but added that “activities of this nature fall outside the MCMC’s mandate, and there has been no involvement or contractual engagement on our part.” The commission said it would closely review the report before deciding whether to take further action.

Experts warned that advances in generative AI are rapidly driving the outsourcing and commercialization of influence operations. Saifuddin Ahmed, a professor at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said the case went “beyond conventional political campaigning into the realm of deceptive manipulation,” adding that commercial influence operations are spreading globally, citing alleged election interference by Israel’s “Team Jorge” in Africa and Latin America and disinformation campaigns by the Russia-linked “Doppelganger” network.

                                                                                                              Jeong Ri-na