OpenAI says Russia and China have used AI in covert campaigns

Like Google, Meta, and Microsoft, OpenAI offers online chatbots and other AI tools that can write social media posts, create photorealistic images, and write computer programs. The company said in its report that its tools were used in influence campaigns that researchers have tracked for years, including a Russian campaign called Doppelganger and a Chinese campaign called Spamouflage.

The Doppelganger campaign used OpenAI technology to make anti-Ukrainian comments that were posted on X in English, French, German, Italian and Polish, OpenAI said. The company’s tools have also been used to translate and edit articles supporting Russia in the war in Ukraine into English and French, and to convert anti-Ukraine news articles into Facebook posts.

The company said OpenAI’s tools were also used in a previously unknown Russian campaign that targeted people in Ukraine, Moldova, the Baltics and the United States, mostly via the Telegram messaging service. The campaign used artificial intelligence to generate commentary in Russian and English about the war in Ukraine, as well as the political situation in Moldova and US policy. These efforts also used OpenAI tools to debug computer code that appeared to be designed to automatically post information to Telegram.

OpenAI said the political comments received few responses and “likes.” The efforts were also sometimes unsophisticated. At one point, the campaign posted text that was clearly AI-generated, with one post stating: “As an AI language model, I am here to help and provide requested feedback.” At other points, they posted in poor English, prompting OpenAI to call the effort “bad grammar.”

Spamouflage, which has long been attributed to China, used OpenAI’s technology to debug software and seek advice on how to analyze social media and research current events, OpenAI said. Its tools were also used to create social media posts disparaging people who criticized the Chinese government.