Chatbots promote sanctioned Russian propaganda

OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s xAI’s Gemini, DeepSeek and Grok are pushing Russian government propaganda from sanctioned entities — including citations from Russian state media, websites linked to Russian intelligence or pro-Kremlin narratives — when asked about the war against Ukraine, according to a new report.

Researchers from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) claim that Russian propaganda has targeted and exploited data voids – where real-time data searches provide few results from legitimate sources – to promote false and misleading information. Nearly a fifth of responses to questions about Russia’s war in Ukraine, across the four chatbots they tested, cited sources attributed to the Russian state, ISD research claims.

“This raises questions about how chatbots react when referring to these sources, considering that many of them are subject to sanctions in the EU,” says Pablo Marestani de las Casas, an analyst at ISD who led the research. The findings raise serious questions about the ability of large language models (LLMs) to restrict EU-sanctioned media, which is a growing concern as more people use AI-powered chatbots as an alternative to search engines to find real-time information, the ISD claims. 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.

Researchers asked chatbots 300 neutral, biased, and “malicious” questions related to the perception of NATO, peace talks, Ukrainian military recruitment of Ukrainian refugees, and war crimes committed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The researchers used separate accounts for each query in English, Spanish, French, German and Italian in an experiment conducted in July. Maristani de las Casas says the same propaganda issues are still present in October.

Amid wide-ranging sanctions imposed on Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, European officials have imposed sanctions on at least 27 Russian media sources for spreading disinformation and distorting facts as part of its “strategy to destabilize” Europe and other countries.

The ISD research says the chatbots cited Sputnik Globe, Sputnik China, RT (formerly Russia Today), EADaily, the Strategic Culture Foundation, and the R-FBI. Some chatbots also cited Russian disinformation networks and Russian journalists or influencers who amplified Kremlin narratives, the research says. Similar previous research has also found that 10 of the most popular chatbots mimic Russian narratives.

OpenAI spokesperson Kate Waters told WIRED in a statement that the company is taking steps “to prevent people from using ChatGPT to spread false or misleading information, including content associated with state-backed actors,” adding that these are long-standing issues that the company is trying to address by improving its model and platforms.