Chatbots push Russia’s banned ads
ChatGPT OpenAI, Google According to a new report, Gemini, DeepSeek, and xAI’s Grok push Russian government propaganda from sanctioned entities — including citations to Russian state media, Russian intelligence-related sites or pro-Kremlin narratives — when asked about the war against Ukraine.
Researchers at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) allege that Russian propaganda has targeted and exploited data gaps — where searches for concurrent data yield few results from legitimate sources — to promote false and misleading information. ISD research claims that nearly a fifth of responses to questions about Russia’s war in Ukraine in the four chatbots they tested cited sources attributed to the Russian government.
“This raises questions about how chatbots are treated when referencing these sources, given that many of them are banned in the EU,” said Pablo Marstani de las Casas, an ISD analyst who led the research. The ISD claims the findings raise serious questions about the ability of large language models (LLM) to restrict EU-sanctioned media, a growing concern as more people use AI chatbots as an alternative to search engines to find information in real time. For the six-month period ending September 30, 2025, ChatGPT search had approximately 120.4 million monthly active recipients in the EU, according to OpenAI data.
The researchers asked the chatbots 300 unbiased, biased, and “malicious” questions about perceptions of NATO, peace talks, Ukrainian military recruitment, Ukrainian refugees, and war crimes committed during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In an experiment in July, researchers used separate accounts for each question in English, Spanish, French, German and Italian. Maristany de las Casas says the same publicity issues still exist in October.
Amid sweeping sanctions against Russia since its February 2022 all-out invasion of Ukraine, European authorities have sanctioned at least 27 Russian media sources for spreading false information and distorting facts as part of a “strategy to destabilize” Europe and other countries.
The ISD investigation says the chatbots have pointed to Sputnik Globe, Sputnik China, RT (formerly Russia Today), EADaily, the Strategic Culture Foundation and R-FBI. Some chatbots also cited Russian disinformation networks and Russian journalists or influencers who bolstered Kremlin narratives, the research said. Similar previous research also found 10 of the most popular chatbots mimicking Russian narratives.
In a statement to WIRED, OpenAI spokesperson Keith Waters told WIRED that the company is taking steps to prevent people from using ChatGPT to spread false or misleading information, including content related to government-sponsored actors, adding that these are long-standing issues that the company is trying to address by improving its model and platforms.
