{"slug": "openai-says-it-disrupted-russian-and-iranian-influence-ops-that-used-chatgpt", "title": "OpenAI says it disrupted Russian and Iranian influence ops that used ChatGPT", "summary": "OpenAI said in a safety report released Thursday that it banned accounts tied to Russian and Iranian influence campaigns that used ChatGPT to spread political propaganda, including a Russian operation that ran a fake research organization called the Social Research Center (SRC) across Latin America. OpenAI said the Russian campaign, which it linked to an organization known as Politology or La Compania, used ChatGPT to create fake leaked documents and audio scripts and targeted Ukraine's reputation in Latin America, while the separate Iranian campaign used seven fake journalist identities to place nearly 100 articles in roughly a dozen outlets between July 2025 and October 2026. OpenAI said both sets of operators accessed its models via VPNs because it does not allow access from Russia or Iran.", "body_md": "# OpenAI says it disrupted Russian and Iranian influence ops that used ChatGPT\n\nRussian and Iranian influence campaigns used ChatGPT to spread propaganda through social media, news outlets and a fake research organization, researchers said.\n\n In a safety [report](https://openai.com/index/disrupting-ai-enabled-false-front-operations/) on Thursday, ChatGPT maker OpenAI said it had banned accounts linked to both campaigns, which used artificial intelligence alongside more traditional tactics to spread political propaganda. \n\nRussian operatives used ChatGPT to help run a covert influence campaign across Latin America, including by setting up a fake research organization called the Social Research Center (SRC).\n\nThe center publicly described itself as a research platform focused on the Indian diaspora in Latin America and relations between India and countries in the region. According to OpenAI, however, Russian operatives appeared to control the organization through a fabricated identity.\n\nThe campaign also recruited people in Latin America to conduct research for the center, apparently without disclosing its Russian connections.\n\n“The available evidence suggests that these on-the-ground employees had no idea that they were working for a Russian operation, and conducted research tasks in good faith,” OpenAI said.\n\nMuch of the center's published material appeared to be original research produced by those employees rather than AI-generated content, the report said.\n\nThe Russian operation mainly aimed to damage Ukraine’s reputation in Latin America, but some of its activities also appeared designed to influence domestic politics in countries such as Argentina and Bolivia.\n\nIts operators used ChatGPT to create fake leaked documents and scripts for audio recordings, some of which circulated online. At least some of the false claims spread widely enough to prompt fact-checks and official denials, according to the report.\n\nThe company did not attribute the campaign to a specific threat actor but said evidence suggested connections to a Russian organization known as Politology or La Compania, which has been reported to be a successor to influence operations associated with the late Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner Group.\n\nThe campaign's operators primarily communicated with ChatGPT in Russian and appeared to be based in Russia.\n\n“Since we do not allow access to our models from Russia, they used VPNs to connect to our services,” OpenAI said.\n\n## Iranian operation\n\nThe separate Iranian campaign used seven fake journalist identities to pitch articles about the U.S.-Iran conflict to online publications.\n\nOpenAI said it identified nearly 100 articles published or republished under those identities across roughly a dozen outlets, primarily small and midsize publications covering international affairs, geopolitics and the Middle East.\n\nThe earliest identified article appeared in July 2025 and the latest in October 2026, according to the report. OpenAI did not identify any of the publications.\n\nThe operators used ChatGPT to improve lengthy articles, prepare pitches to editors and draft internal reports. They also generated batches of social media comments in English and Persian on political and geopolitical topics.\n\nThe social media activity appeared to attract little attention, with researchers identifying relatively few likes, views or replies. Some of the outlets that published the articles, however, had substantial audiences. One had nearly 2 million Facebook followers, according to OpenAI.\n\nThe accounts involved in the operation appeared to originate in Iran, primarily used Persian-language prompts and accessed ChatGPT through VPNs, the company said. OpenAI did not identify the individuals or organizations responsible.\n\nAccording to the report, both the Russian and Iranian campaigns went beyond fake social media accounts, using seemingly independent organizations to spread their messages.\n\n\"What is most striking about these operations is that they closely resembled complex influence operations of the pre-AI age, but used AI to make some of the workflows easier,\" OpenAI said.\n\nDaryna Antoniuk\n\nis a reporter for Recorded Future News based in Ukraine. She writes about cybersecurity startups, cyberattacks in Eastern Europe and the state of the cyberwar between Ukraine and Russia. She previously was a tech reporter for Forbes Ukraine. Her work has also been published at Sifted, The Kyiv Independent and The Kyiv Post.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/openai-says-it-disrupted-russian-and-iranian-influence-ops-that-used-chatgpt", "canonical_source": "https://therecord.media/openai-disrupts-russian-iranian-operations-chatgpt", "published_at": "2026-10-09 13:50:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-10-09 14:21:10.361911+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-safety", "artificial-intelligence", "generative-ai", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["OpenAI", "ChatGPT", "Social Research Center", "Politology", "La Compania", "Yevgeny Prigozhin", "Wagner Group", "Iran"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/openai-says-it-disrupted-russian-and-iranian-influence-ops-that-used-chatgpt", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/openai-says-it-disrupted-russian-and-iranian-influence-ops-that-used-chatgpt.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/openai-says-it-disrupted-russian-and-iranian-influence-ops-that-used-chatgpt.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/openai-says-it-disrupted-russian-and-iranian-influence-ops-that-used-chatgpt.jsonld"}}