OpenAI banned Russian ChatGPT accounts backing covert influence operation
Brief
OpenAI banned Russian ChatGPT accounts backing a fake think tank, IBI, that used AI posts and a fake “sovereignty” index to push pro‑Russia narratives.
OpenAI says it has banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts that likely originated in Russia and were used to support a covert influence operation. The campaign promoted an organisation called the International Burke Institute, or IBI, a supposed expert community that claimed to be based in Israel.
The operation did not rely on dramatic deepfakes or a viral bot army. It used a more familiar method: build something that looks credible, fill it with enough content to seem legitimate, then use social media to push people toward it. Credibility is often cheaper to fake than to earn.
OpenAI says the operators prompted ChatGPT in Russian to generate comments and posts, mostly in English, for X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Telegram and Substack.