OpenAI disrupts Russian, Iranian AI-enabled influence operations
OpenAI says it has disrupted two covert influence operations originating in Russia and Iran that used its artificial intelligence tools to produce political content, fabricate identities and spread misleading narratives online to impact public opinion, Qazinform News Agency reports.
According to the company’s report published on Thursday, the Russian-origin operation, dubbed Dark Clark, targeted audiences in Latin America with content aimed at undermining Ukraine and seeking to influence political debates in Argentina and Bolivia. Its activities included fabricated reports, forged emails and fake audio recordings. OpenAI said the operation used a fictitious think tank and online personas to make its activities appear legitimate.
OpenAI assessed Dark Clark at Category 5 on the Brookings Breakout Scale, the first Category 5 operation the company said it had disrupted. However, OpenAI cautioned that the operators’ claims about their campaigns’ impact did not necessarily reflect what they had actually achieved.
The Iran-origin operation, named Bogus Bylines, used seven fictitious journalist identities to pitch English-language articles about US-Iran tensions to online publications worldwide. Nearly 100 articles were published or syndicated across roughly a dozen outlets. The operation’s social media comments received little engagement, according to OpenAI. The company assessed the article-publishing activity at Category 4 and the commenting activity at Category 2 on the same scale.
OpenAI said it had banned ChatGPT accounts associated with both operations and shared information with authorities. The company noted that AI tools helped the groups produce content more efficiently and in more fluent language, but their methods largely resembled influence operations that existed before generative AI.
Earlier, Qazinform News Agency reported that OpenAI had confirmed that its artificial intelligence agents interacted unexpectedly with websites operated by the US Commerce Department and Securities and Exchange Commission.
