OpenAI removes Russian ChatGPT accounts tied to influence campaign
OpenAI said it banned a cluster of Russian ChatGPT accounts that used virtual private networks to bypass access restrictions and support an influence operation. The accounts generated social-media posts and comments promoting the International Burke Institute (IBI), a self-described expert community based in Israel.
The activity spread material on Substack, Telegram, X, Facebook and LinkedIn. OpenAI assessed the campaign’s audience as relatively small, although individual Telegram channels drew about 10,000 to 20,000 followers. Most of the AI-generated content was written in English, and the operators instructed ChatGPT to avoid linguistic clues that could reveal a Russian origin.
A promotional layer around a larger operation
OpenAI’s investigation began with AI-generated social posts but expanded into what it described as a broader influence operation. The effort centred on a website carrying copied and misattributed academic work, a sovereignty index favourable to Russia, and measures intended to hide the operators’ provenance.
IBI is associated with the ibi[.]institute website, registered in February 2025. The site presents itself as an international community of experts in economics, politics, sociology and international relations. OpenAI said there was no evidence that the articles published on the website were created with ChatGPT. It noted, however, that many appeared copied from academic writings, sometimes with false attribution, while other texts appeared to have been drafted by a Slavic speaker and machine-translated into English.
The operation also went beyond posts about IBI. One ChatGPT user created a profile image for a Telegram channel called American Observer and repeatedly requested Russian-language summaries of that channel’s activity.
The Sovereignty Index and manufactured authority
A notable component was the Sovereignty Index, also called the Burke Index. The website says it combines political, economic, technological, information, cultural, cognitive and military sovereignty. Each area is calculated using equalisation coefficients and a maximum score of 100 points; the seven scores are combined into a cumulative index ranging from 100 to 700.
Its published rankings put the United States first at 650.9, followed by China at 649.1, Switzerland at 610.7 and Russia at 601.4. The Russia report characterised the country as having a high level of sovereignty and record military and economic self-sufficiency, while identifying demographic ageing, innovation constraints and selective global integration as challenges.
Why the limited reach still matters
OpenAI distinguished this effort from already documented Russia-linked influence operations. It said its importance lay less in the audience reached than in the infrastructure built around the campaign: an institution designed to appear credible, purported experts, republished academic material and a proprietary-looking index.
The case shows that AI can serve as a supporting tool rather than the core of an influence operation. For businesses, the practical implication is to scrutinise the provenance, attribution and methodology behind apparently authoritative research organisations before relying on their claims in communications or decisions.