influence-operations
Latest stories covering influence-operations, with summaries and links to related coverage.
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Disrupting a new covert influence campaign from Russia
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7 min read
OpenAI banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts that it said very likely originated in Russia and were used to promote the International Burke Institute, or IBI, a purported Israel-based expert community. The operators used VPNs to access ChatGPT because OpenAI does not permit model access from Russia. They prompted the service in Russian to produce mostly English-language posts and comments for X, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack and Telegram, while instructing it to conceal linguistic signs of Russian authorship. OpenAI said the campaign used ChatGPT primarily for promotional social-media content, including replies to real Substack users that encouraged them to follow IBI. One operator also generated German-language Telegram posts criticizing Ukraine, the EU and the German government, while advocating closer relations with Russia. Another created logos for about a dozen country-focused Telegram channels and requested Russian-language summaries of their activity. IBI’s website, registered in February 2025, promoted a “sovereignty index” that portrayed Russia favorably and criticized Western countries. In a sample of 36 IBI articles published from September 2025 through May 2026, OpenAI found that 34 had been copied from elsewhere online, sometimes with false attribution. OpenAI assessed the operation’s direct social-media reach as limited, although its Telegram channels generally had 10,000 to 20,000 followers each.