OpenAI disrupts Russian influence campaign using ChatGPT to promote pro-Kremlin narratives
This digest was compiled by AI from multiple sources — links to the originals are below.
OpenAI has disrupted a covert Russian influence campaign that used ChatGPT to generate social media posts promoting pro-Kremlin narratives. The company banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts operated from Russia via VPNs. The campaign pushed the International Burke Institute, a fake think tank that published a sovereignty index favoring Russia.
Key Facts
- OpenAI banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts used by a Russian influence campaign that accessed the platform from Russia through VPNs.
- The campaign promoted the International Burke Institute (IBI), a think tank supposedly based in Israel, which published a sovereignty index ranking Russia favorably.
- 34 of 36 expert-linked IBI articles published between September 2025 and May 2026 were copied from other sources, some with fake author credits.
- The campaign spread posts across X, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack, and Telegram, including German-language content on a Telegram channel called 'Lahme Ente'.
- OpenAI rates the campaign at category three out of six on the Brookings Breakout Scale, with linked Telegram channels reaching 10,000 to 20,000 followers each.
Campaign Infrastructure
The operators accessed ChatGPT from Russia through VPNs and instructed the model to hide linguistic clues pointing to their Russian origin. The campaign's goal was to promote the International Burke Institute (IBI), a think tank supposedly based in Israel. The IBI published a 'sovereignty index' that ranked Russia favorably while making Western countries look worse by comparison. Russia's military scores 0.5 points higher than the US military, according to the IBI.
Content and Reach
The campaign spread posts across X, LinkedIn, Facebook, Substack, and Telegram. Some content was in German, posted to a Telegram channel called 'Lahme Ente' that criticized Ukraine, the EU, and the German federal government while pushing for closer ties with Russia. A second operator created logos for about a dozen Telegram channels focused on Germany, the US, France, Poland, and Turkey and regularly requested Russian-language summaries of channel activity. Individual posts got very few views, and the official IBI accounts had low subscriber counts, according to OpenAI. The linked Telegram channels, however, each reached 10,000 to 20,000 followers.
Previous Disruptions
In June 2024, OpenAI exposed a Russian network called 'Bad Grammar' that used its models to generate political comments on Telegram about Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltic States. A year later, OpenAI identified 'Operation Helgoland Bite,' another Russian campaign that used ChatGPT to produce German-language content ahead of Germany's 2025 federal election, attacking the US and NATO while promoting the AfD party. These are only the cases OpenAI caught on its own platform.
5 sources
OpenAI disrupts Russian influence campaign using ChatGPT to promote pro-Kremlin narratives
