Facebook said on Friday that the platform had removed hundreds of accounts associated with Epoch Media Group. The group is The parent of The Epoch Times, a conservative media company linked to falun gong.

The accounts, which include pages, groups and Instagram streams, use artificial intelligence to generate fake profile photos, presenting new challenges for researchers. Computer scientists have long feared that artificial intelligence could be used to launch large-scale disinformation campaigns. Now, they say, it is worrying that the technology is being used on Facebook's platform.

610 Facebook accounts, 89 Facebook pages, 156 groups and 72 Instagram accounts post about the United States, including political news and issues such as President trump's impeachment, conservative ideology, political candidates, trade and religion.

"This is a huge, the unscrupulous false network, with different levels of false account and automatic operation, systematically released with two key: the content of the ideology for Donald trump, against the Chinese government," the Atlantic Council's Digital forensics Research laboratory (Atlantic Council 's Digital Forensic Research Lab), the director of Graham brooke (Graham Brookie) said.

The lab and Graphika, another company that studies false information, released a joint report analyzing how Facebook removed the accounts.

In an email to the New York times, epoch media denied that it had anything to do with the network targeted by Facebook and said Facebook had not contacted the company before publishing its findings.

Facebook says the people behind the network use artificial intelligence to generate profile pictures. They rely on a type of artificial intelligence known as generative antagonism network (GAN). These networks can teach themselves through a process called machine learning to create realistic images of faces, even if they don't belong to a real person.

Facebook said the accounts disguise their activities by using a mixture of fake and real us accounts to manage pages and groups on the platform. Facebook said The fake activities centered around a media outlet called The Beauty of Life, or The BL. In November, The fact-checking agency Snopes said The BL had "created a fake empire on Facebook."

Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of security policy, said The company began investigating The BL in July and accelerated its efforts this fall when The network became more active in Posting information. He said Facebook was continuing to investigate "other connections and networks" related to The BL.

Facebook said the network spent less than $9.5m on advertising on Facebook and Instagram. On Friday, Facebook said The BL would be banned from The social network.

Epoch times and The BL have denied any connection, but Facebook said it had found collaboration between The network and epoch media group and individuals working on its behalf in Vietnam to publish untrue content.

Epoch media group said in an email that The BL was founded by a former employee of The company and employed some former epoch employees. "However, The fact that some of our former employees worked at The BL does not prove any link between The two organisations," The company said.

A Facebook spokeswoman said that until Friday morning, executives at The BL were active administrators on The page of epoch media group.

In August, Facebook banned epoch times ads after NBC reported that the paper had covered up its links to Facebook ads promoting President trump and conspiracy theories