Operation “Stop News”: Russia-origin influence activity

This case study was originally published in OpenAI’s October 2024⁠(opens in a new window) report.

Actor

We banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts that were generating content in English, French and Russian that was then posted by a number of websites and social media accounts across multiple platforms. This activity originated in Russia and appeared consistent with an operation run by a marketing company. We began our investigation after reviewing off-platform indicators in Meta’s 2024 second quarter threat report.

Behavior

This operation used our models to generate short comments, long-form articles and images. The long-form articles in English and French were then posted on a cluster of websites that posed as news outlets in Africa and the UK. The short comments were posted by accounts on X. (Some may have also been posted on Facebook and Instagram before Meta’s takedown, but we would not be able to independently verify that activity.) Content in Russian served as promotional materials on a range of websites and Russian-language forums. Two of the websites used the brand “newstop”; we have dubbed this operation, “Stop News”.

This operation was unusually prolific in its use of imagery. Many of its web articles and tweets were accompanied by images generated using DALL·E. These images were often in cartoon style, and used bright color palettes or dramatic tones to attract attention. We have no indication that they were intended to falsely represent events which never happened, or to serve as deepfakes: rather, it seems more likely that their purpose may have been to catch the eye, making the articles or social media posts more engaging. Despite this use, their general level of engagement remained low, with few to no likes, comments, shares or views.

Content

Impact

As part of our disruption of this network, we have shared indicators with the relevant authorities and distribution platforms.