Key Notes
- OpenAI banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts it says very likely originated in Russia, used to build and promote the International Burke Institute (IBI), a fake "expert community" whose website falsely claimed a base in Israel and listed prominent academics among its "experts".
- Operators accessed ChatGPT via VPNs, prompted in Russian, generated content mostly in English, and explicitly instructed the model to strip out linguistic markers of Russian origin.
- Posts were spread on Substack, Telegram, X, Facebook and LinkedIn, including a "sovereignty index" that favorably rated Russia and criticized Western countries.
OpenAI said it banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts it assesses very likely originated in Russia, used to support a covert influence operation built around a fabricated research organization called the International Burke Institute. The company disclosed the takedown in a blog post, saying an investigation into AI-generated social media posts led it to a far broader operation than initially apparent.
The fake institute, whose website was registered in February 2025, falsely claimed to be based in Israel and listed prominent real academics, including Francis Fukuyama and Noam Chomsky, as though they were affiliated experts.
OpenAI reviewed 36 articles attributed to the site’s listed experts published between September 2025 and May 2026 and found 34 had been copied from elsewhere online, in some cases with incorrect attribution to different authors. The operation also produced a “sovereignty index,” a purportedly proprietary metric that cast Russia favorably while denigrating Western countries.
The mechanics of how ChatGPT was used are specific. Because OpenAI blocks direct access to its models from Russia, the operators used VPNs to reach the platform. They prompted the model in Russian to generate social media content, most of which was published in English, and explicitly instructed ChatGPT to strip out linguistic markers that might reveal Russian origin. The resulting posts and comments appeared across Substack, Telegram, X, Facebook and LinkedIn.
The operation’s actual reach appears to have been modest. OpenAI said most of the social media posts received low view counts, the institute’s own accounts had few subscribers, and Telegram channels associated with the campaign attracted between roughly 10,000 and 20,000 followers each.
The company argued the operation’s significance lies not in the audience it reached but in the infrastructure it built: a seemingly credible institution complete with purported experts, republished academic work and a proprietary-looking index, the kind of assets that could be scaled into a larger operation over time.
OpenAI also noted an ironic byproduct of the campaign’s AI use, saying it was the traceable, distinctive pattern of AI-generated content that helped investigators uncover the broader operation in the first place.
Not an Isolated Finding
OpenAI said in February it had shut down ChatGPT accounts connected to Rybar, a pro-Russia media outlet that the UK government describes as partially coordinated by the Russian Presidential Administration, funded by the state defense conglomerate Rostec, and working with Russian intelligence services.
OpenAI has published similar disruption reports periodically since 2024, when it first documented influence operations tied to Russia, China, Iran and Israel using its tools, and subsequent reports have detailed additional Russia-linked operations, including one called Helgoland Bite targeting Germany’s 2025 election with content supporting the AfD party.
The pattern across these disclosures illustrates a consistent dynamic: state-linked or state-adjacent actors are treating generative AI as a productivity tool for propaganda, useful for drafting content, disguising authorship and building a veneer of institutional legitimacy at low cost, but the same generated content often carries detectable patterns that AI companies can use to trace and expose the underlying operation.
OpenAI framed this as a double-edged outcome worth taking seriously in both directions: AI genuinely lowers the barrier to manufacturing false authority at scale, while also creating new forensic traces that were not previously available to investigators working to detect and disrupt these campaigns before they grow larger.
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