The YouTube channel Sophie décrypte ("Sophie Deciphers"), with its synthetic AI voice, does not exactly strive for subtlety. In one of its YouTube videos, titled "Red alert: China is rewriting the rules of the economic game, causing the United States' downfall," the so-called YouTuber praised China's economic strategy for around 10 minutes, castigating the United States and explaining that countries still relying on the dollar and the purchase of American debt were on the road to ruin. "Well, my friends," says the voice, "you'll never guess what China is doing: They've decided to say goodbye to the good old American dollar, and they're doing it with an unbelievable Chinese style." Sophie décrypte also used this opportunity to praise China's know-how in technological production. "America fears China's technological rise," explains the AI-produced voice.

Le Monde identified a dozen YouTube channels relying on the same model and publishing – often quite long – videos promoting Chinese interests to a French-speaking audience. They have names such as Monde connecté ("Connected World"), Pulsations géoéconomiques ("Geo-economic trends"), 360 Vision, Dernière Minute ("Last Minute") and EcoPolitique. With almost 50,000 subscribers, a Facebook page and over 2 million combined views, Sophie décrypte – whose channel has since been suspended – used to be the figurehead of this strange network, which is trying to play with the platform with enticing thumbnails and eye-catching titles: "Biden signs the death warrant for the US economy, Putin makes the West tremble," or "Crisis in Iran! Iran sanctions crude oil sales to China."

The editorial line of some of these channels focusing on China's industrial interests offers a few odd examples. For instance, a video on the channel Horizons bâtis en Chine ("Horizons built in China") is titled "China dominates the world truck sales market with its cab-over-engine models." Some videos leave China aside to focus on geopolitical issues like the Israel-Hamas war, mainly to highlight the positions of Russia and Iran, presented as protectors of the Palestinian cause, but also to attack the United States, Israel's ally.

Created for the most part in the second half of 2023, these channels offer, at best, a disposable email address created for the occasion. Sophie décrypte's profile picture was stolen from the Internet, and the majority of these channels use synthetic voices. In reality, they are the French-language counterpart to "Shadow Play," the name given to a pro-China influence operation unveiled by the think tank Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) last December. Its researchers uncovered several English-language channels using synthetic voices whose main aim was to trumpet Beijing's political and economic merits.

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