The next speaker in this session at the 2026 Association of Internet Researchers conference in Mexico City is Marc Tuters, whose interest was peaked by videos of celebrities campaigning for Burkina Faso leader Ibrahim Traoré. These videos were part of a broader campaign of AI slop supporting Traoré, who has strong links to the Russian regime, and this led to a broader investigation of Russian influence operations.
Such operations no longer employ conventional propaganda dissemination techniques, but instead involve and enrol platforms and users in the production and dissemination of propagandist content; this is a form of memetic entrainment which draws ordinary users into participatory propaganda activities. The question then becomes what survives this repetition and dissemination of the message.
In May 2025, the Boombox Pulse channel on YouTube uploaded ten AI-slop videos of celebrity singers performing pro-Traoré songs, but there was no evidence of the account being linked to Russian influence operations; instead, it also featured over 200 videos of disgraced singer R. Kelly purportedly performing from gaol. However, curiously the burst in Traore videos over just 96 hours also coincided with a substantial spike in new views and subscribers. Subsequent videos also featured Taylor Swift praying on the California wildfires.
Such videos represent a form of cheap variation: while performers and themes change, the overall pattern remains the same. There may be no organised campaign here, and the repetition is not necessarily evidence of political positioning but could also simply point to a standardised content production pipeline.
What are we looking at here, then? In addition to Boombox Pulse there are also several other channels about Traoré, but here the topical focus remains while the production styles change – this resembles the overall strategies of influence operations far more closely. Notably, Boombox Pulse has now been deleted from YouTube, so only fragments of this strange case remain online now. Its provenance remains unresolved.
