OpenAI has banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts that it assesses were very likely operated from Russia and used to support a covert influence campaign. The operators generated mostly English social posts promoting the International Burke Institute, a supposed Israel-based expert group.
The institute’s website contained copied or falsely attributed academic material and published a “sovereignty” index that praised Russia while criticizing Western countries. OpenAI says the campaign also produced comments and posts for Substack, Telegram, X, Facebook and LinkedIn, often instructing ChatGPT to hide linguistic signs of Russian authorship. The operators used VPNs because OpenAI does not provide model access from Russia.
The company found that some social accounts carried the institute’s branding while others posed as ordinary users. A related German-language channel criticized Ukraine, the European Union and Germany, and another operator generated logos for channels targeting several countries.
OpenAI describes the operation as unusually elaborate but says it appears to have attracted relatively small audiences. Its report documents the platform activity and account removals; it does not establish that the campaign materially changed public opinion.