Russia's Digital Development Ministry had proposed using artificial intelligence to identify VPN services and raise the effectiveness of blocking them to 95%, Kommersant reported.
The newspaper reviewed one version of a draft national plan for the introduction of artificial intelligence technologies through 2030.
The document proposed increasing the share of blocked VPN services whose identifying characteristics are analyzed using AI to 70%, while raising the overall effectiveness of VPN blocking to 95%.
The Digital Development Ministry told Kommersant, however, that those provisions are absent from the current version of the draft national plan.
A source familiar with the discussions told the newspaper that government agencies had proposed various measures for inclusion in the document and that some may not have survived into the final version.
According to Kommersant, “intelligent algorithms” are already used to analyze internet traffic, although the authorities do not classify them as artificial intelligence technologies.
The use of AI to block VPN services was therefore considered as a proposal but has not been approved as an active measure.