Officials have issued a warning regarding AI: groups linked to Russia are allegedly trying to influence the responses given by AI chatbots. This raises serious concerns about the information that models might use in the future to generate answers.
As reported by the organization NewsGuard, pro-Russian websites spread claims that Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had tried to sell gold from the Amulsar mine at a discount to Turkish companies. The issue is that the information turned out to be completely false; but what is concerning is that when AI chatbots were asked about the veracity of this information, they responded that it was true.
In the words of Chine Labbé, managing editor and senior vice president of partnerships for Europe and Canada at Newsguard: "In March 2025, we found that in 33% of cases, leading commercial chatbots, including Mistral's chat and OpenAI's ChatGPT, repeated these narratives as verified facts, despite knowing they are false stories serving the Kremlin's geopolitical interests."
Almost a year later, in January 2026, Newsguard conducted a new investigation and, although some chatbots seemed to have improved, others continued to spread false information.
How does this strategy work?
The curious thing is that the method allegedly being used is not linked to hacking systems, but rather to the massive publication of propaganda content on the internet. As explained by France 24, AI-powered chatbots are probabilistic tools, so they prioritize the most widely disseminated information, not necessarily the most reliable.
In this way, AI models could take this information to train themselves and to generate responses to prompts. Specifically, European authorities point to "Pravda" as the pro-Russian propaganda network behind this strategy. The network consists of several websites that republish content aligned with the Kremlin. Previous investigations by NewsGuard - citing statistics from the non-profit organization American Sunlight Project - claim that this network produced 3.6 million articles during 2024, with the aim of saturating the internet with disinformation and influencing the responses given by AI models. The organization examined 10 of the leading AI chatbots and found that they repeated false narratives of Russian disinformation.
A report cited by Wired had also warned about the same problem, stating that models like ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, and Grok were reproducing Russian state propaganda when asked about the war in Ukraine. The outlet cited the Institute of Strategic Dialogue (ISD), which stated that Russian propaganda took advantage of "data voids," searches that return few results, to spread misleading information.
NBC News noted that it contacted the companies developing AI chatbots and some responded that they are continuously working to improve their systems, reduce hallucinations, and prevent the reproduction of false information.
The underlying concern is that the problem may worsen, given that more and more AI assistants consult information from the internet to craft their responses. This is a concern not limited to Russia alone, but speaks to the new "fake news," a strategy that any actor could exploit to manipulate the responses given by AI models.
