OpenAI—OpenAI banned Russian and Iranian accounts running coordinated ChatGPT-powered influence operations
OpenAI disclosed on October 8, 2026 that it had banned accounts tied to Russian and Iranian influence operations that misused ChatGPT. A Russian operation targeted Latin American countries to undermine support for Ukraine, created a fake think tank, recruited unwitting researchers, and reached a European Parliament member - described by OpenAI as the widest-reaching influence operation it has found to date, and reminiscent of the Internet Research Agency's 2016 US election interference campaign. A separate Iranian operation created seven fake authors who used ChatGPT to pitch and polish roughly 100 articles in small outlets worldwide, in English and Persian, focused on US-Iran tensions and American politics.
Scoring Impact
| Topic | Direction | Relevance | Contribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Content Moderation | +toward | secondary | +0.50 |
| Misinformation | -against | primary | +1.00 |
| Overall incident score = | +0.643 | ||
Score = avg(topic contributions) × significance (high ×1.5) × confidence (0.57)
Evidence (1 signal)
NPR: OpenAI bans Russian, Iranian accounts over influence operations
NPR reported OpenAI's disclosure that it banned accounts tied to Russian and Iranian state-linked and commercial influence operations that used ChatGPT to generate propaganda and disinformation content, including the widest-reaching such operation OpenAI has identified to date.