OpenAI has banned ChatGPT accounts linked to an Iranian group suspected of spreading fake news on social media about the upcoming US presidential campaign.
These accounts reportedly used ChatGPT to generate long-form articles and short social media comments about both candidates: Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump. Despite being posted on several websites, the influence operation "does not appear to have achieved meaningful audience engagement," according to a Friday alert.
Open AI attributed the fake posts to Storm-2035, a Tehran-backed group that Microsoft also flagged last week for continued election meddling, with some efforts leaning toward inciting violence. Later last week, Google's threat analysts published intelligence on Iranian cyber influence activities following a surge in attacks that resulted in data leaks from the Trump re-election campaign.
In total, OpenAI identified 12 accounts on X and one on Instagram involved in this covert operation. Beyond the US presidential election, the fabricated news and comments also covered the conflict in Gaza, Israel's participation in the Olympics, and other politically sensitive topics.
"The first workstream produced articles on US politics and global events, published on five websites that posed as both progressive and conservative news outlets," OpenAI said on Friday. "The second workstream created short comments in English and Spanish, which were posted on social media."
The five domains identified are:
niothinker[.]com
savannahtime[.]com
evenpolitics[.]com
teorator[.]com
westlandsun[.]com
Storm-2035, along with at least one of its fake-news sites, EvenPolitics, has been active online since the US midterm elections in 2022, publishing around 10 "articles" a week. While these are primarily in English, the group also operates influence-operation websites in Arabic, French, and Spanish.
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