OpenAI has banned a set of ChatGPT accounts it assessed as very likely originating in Russia. The accounts promoted an ostensible Israeli institute that published copied research under academics' names. Most posts received few views, although associated Telegram channels had up to 20,000 followers each.

A network originating in Russia used ChatGPT to promote an organization that presented itself as an academic institute, according to an OpenAI report published Wednesday (OpenAI report).

OpenAI said it banned a group of accounts whose operators used Russian-language prompts to generate social media posts and comments, mostly written in English. The operators also instructed ChatGPT to conceal signs that the content originated in Russia.

"Although the campaign appears to have reached relatively small audiences, its elaborate construction distinguishes it from other Russia-linked influence operations we have disrupted since the start of the war in Ukraine," the company wrote.

Because ChatGPT is unavailable in Russia, OpenAI said the group used virtual private networks (VPNs) to disguise their location and access the service.

The group used ChatGPT to promote the International Burke Institute (IBI), which claimed to be an Israel-based expert group, through official-looking profiles and accounts posing as ordinary users. OpenAI found that 34 of the 36 articles it reviewed on the institute's website were copied, and some were credited to academics who did not write them.

"Some of these articles were years old; others were attributed to the wrong authors," OpenAI wrote. "For example, one article on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor appears to have been copied from a Cambridge University Press original, but incorrectly attributed to a professor at the University of Nottingham whose expertise is in South Asian politics."

The use of a fabricated academic front reflects a broader technique in influence operations known as credibility laundering: false or repurposed "research" attributed to real scholars can lend an appearance of legitimacy to political narratives, and can be amplified by fake personas citing the supposed institute's work. OpenAI noted that the personas pushing IBI content also commented on current events in the Middle East, Europe, and the United States, where stolen academic material could serve as apparent independent corroboration.

Similar political influence campaigns have previously used generative AI. In 2024, OpenAI identified a separate Russia-linked campaign known as Doppelganger, which used ChatGPT to create articles, social media posts, and comments that praised Russia and attacked Ukraine, NATO, and the United States. OpenAI publishes recurring reports on malicious uses of its models, and the IBI case is the latest in a series of takedowns it has disclosed since the start of the war in Ukraine — a cadence that has made the company's threat reports a primary public window into how state-linked and covert actors attempt to weaponize consumer AI tools.

Russia-linked groups have also used ChatGPT for cyber operations. OpenAI said Forest Blizzard, a group tied to Russian military intelligence, used the chatbot to research targets, write scripts, and support phishing attacks.

While the group may have used Russian-language prompts, OpenAI did not attribute the IBI campaign to the Russian government. According to OpenAI, some people in Israel may have represented the institute at conferences or through article submissions, but their relationship to the campaign remains unclear.

"We are not in a position to determine the relationship between these individuals, the IBI, and the operators in Russia," OpenAI wrote. For researchers and platforms tracking such networks, the case illustrates a verification challenge that is likely to recur: influence material that carries the trappings of scholarship — citations, author affiliations, institutional branding — can be fabricated or recycled with generative AI, and future disclosures in OpenAI's disruption reports are a place to watch for similar fronts.