Disrupting deceptive uses of AI by covert influence operations

OpenAI is committed to enforcing policies that prevent abuse and to improving transparency around AI-generated content. That is especially true with respect to detecting and disrupting covert influence operations (IO), which attempt to manipulate public opinion or influence political outcomes without revealing the true identity or intentions of the actors behind them. 

In the last three months, we have disrupted five covert IO that sought to use our models in support of deceptive activity across the internet. As of May 2024, these campaigns do not appear to have meaningfully increased their audience engagement or reach as a result of our services. 

This blog describes the threat actors we disrupted, attacker trends we identified, and important defensive trends - including how designing AI models with safety in mind in many cases prevented the threat actors from generating the content they desired, and how AI tools have made our own investigations more efficient. Alongside this blog, we are publishing a trend analysis that describes the behavior of these malicious actors in detail.

Read the full report⁠(opens in a new window)

Threat actors work across the internet. So do we. By collaborating with industry, civil society, and government we tackle the creation, distribution, and impact of IO content.  Our investigations and disruptions were made possible in part because there’s been so much detailed threat reporting over the years by distribution platforms and the open-source community. OpenAI is publishing these findings, as other tech companies do, to promote information sharing and best practices amongst the broader community of stakeholders.

Specifically, we disrupted: 

The content posted by these various operations focused on a wide range of issues, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the conflict in Gaza, the Indian elections, politics in Europe and the United States, and criticisms of the Chinese government by Chinese dissidents and foreign governments.