OpenAI says it has banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts originating in Russia that were being used to run a covert influence campaign.
According to OpenAI's own blog post, "Disrupting a new covert influence campaign from Russia," the accounts used AI to promote a fake think tank presented as being based in Israel, along with a "sovereignty" index that praised Russia and criticized the West.
TradingView reported the same disclosure, naming the entity the accounts were pushing as the International Burke Institute. Quartz also covered the bans, framing the takedown as OpenAI removing Russian ChatGPT accounts tied to an influence operation.
The basic shape of the operation is familiar from earlier propaganda work, but the tooling is not. A fake think tank gives political messaging the appearance of independent expertise, and an "index" — a thing that looks like research output, with rankings and scores — gives that messaging a veneer of methodology. What general-purpose AI tools change is the cost: the writing, translation, and volume that once required staff can be produced by a small group with chatbot accounts.
OpenAI's account of the campaign is, at this stage, the primary public source for it. The sources here describe the ban and the content the accounts promoted; they do not establish how large the audience was, how long the operation ran, or who directed it.
It matters because the fight over online influence campaigns is increasingly being policed inside the AI companies themselves — meaning the public largely learns about these operations when, and in the form that, the platforms choose to disclose them.