NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenya has been named in a new global threat intelligence report by artificial intelligence company Anthropic, which says a pro-government operator used its Claude AI models to generate fake grassroots social media posts ahead of the country’s 2027 General Election.
The disclosure is contained in “Detecting and Countering Misuse of AI: September 2026,” a report published by Anthropic this week documenting malicious activities it said it disrupted between December 2025 and August 2026.
Kenya features in the report’s section on influence operations, where Anthropic said it identified and removed an account operated by a single actor who used Claude to mass-produce political content designed to appear as spontaneous public sentiment.
AI Used to Generate Fake Grassroots Posts
According to Anthropic, the operator used Claude across several sessions to generate batches of exactly 50 tweets at a time.
The actor explicitly instructed the AI model to make the posts appear to be organic commentary rather than part of a coordinated political campaign.
Many of the generated posts praised Energy Cabinet Secretary Opiyo Wandayi for halting a scheduled Kenya Power electricity tariff increase.
The posts used hashtags including #PowerReliefKE and #PoweringTheNewKenya to increase their visibility.
The operation also promoted narratives claiming that Kenya’s United Opposition coalition was breaking apart ahead of the 2027 election.
Those narratives directly targeted opposition figures including Rigathi Gachagua and former President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Anthropic Finds No Evidence of Government Involvement
Anthropic said it found no evidence that the Kenyan government was involved in the operation.
The company assessed the activity as consistent with a domestic Kenyan operation but said it was unable to identify the organisation behind the campaign.
However, Anthropic noted that the operation’s pro-administration tone, together with its use of specific political hashtags, could plausibly indicate alignment with the ruling coalition.
The company classified the operation as Category One on its Breakout Scale, the lowest level, because the activity remained confined to the network of fake accounts and did not reach or influence genuine users on the platform.
Same Operation Promoted Kenyan Brands
Anthropic said the actor also used an almost identical workflow for commercial purposes.
Under the persona “SHANKI”/“Elkins Marketer,” the operator promoted Kenyan retail brands and repackaged a promotional broadcast into tweets designed to appear organic.
Links were inserted into every fifth post as part of the campaign.
The case illustrates how the same AI-enabled techniques can be applied both to political messaging and commercial promotion, with the technology primarily providing scale and the appearance of authenticity.
Anthropic said the political messages themselves had been fully scripted by the operators before Claude was used to produce them at scale.
AI’s Role Was Mainly Scale
The company said the Kenya operation demonstrated that AI’s primary contribution was not necessarily developing political narratives, but rapidly producing large volumes of content while making coordinated messaging appear authentic.
Anthropic also linked the activity to a broader trend in Kenya involving agencies paying local influencers to disseminate coordinated political narratives.
The company said its visibility into influence campaigns generally ends once content leaves its platform because Anthropic operates upstream of the social media networks where posts are ultimately distributed.
However, it said that position can allow the company to identify and disrupt operations before they reach genuine audiences.
Once an operation is detected, Anthropic said it bans the relevant accounts and incorporates findings into its detection systems.
Nine Global Influence Operations Documented
The Kenyan case forms part of a wider chapter in the report documenting nine influence operations attributed to actors in Russia, Iran, Turkey, the Gulf, South Asia, Africa and Europe.
The campaigns targeted audiences across six continents.
In Africa, Anthropic detailed a Russian-linked propaganda operation involving a radio station in Bangui, Central African Republic, which it linked to the Wagner-associated Africa Corps network.
The company also described a separate commercial “influence-as-a-service” operation that published thousands of politically slanted articles through about 70 fake news websites.
That campaign’s coverage was tilted towards the Democratic Republic of Congo’s position in its dispute with Rwanda.
AI Manipulation Concerns Grow Ahead of 2027
The disclosure adds Kenya to a growing list of African countries where AI-generated or AI-assisted content has been associated with political influence and information manipulation.
The development comes as political parties and prospective candidates intensify preparations for Kenya’s 2027 General Election.
