Chatbots Are Pushing Sanctioned Russian Propaganda
OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, DeepSeek, and xAI's push Grok Russian state propaganda from sanctioned entities — including quotes from Russian state media, sites linked to Russian intelligence or pro-Kremlin stories — when asked about the war against Ukraine, according to a new report.
Researchers from the Institute of Strategic Dialogue (ISD) claim that Russian propaganda has targeted and exploited data void-where searches for real-time data return few results from legitimate sources – to promote false and misleading information. Almost a fifth of the answers to questions about Russia's war in Ukraine, on the four chatbots they tested, mentioned Russian sources attributed to the state, the ISD research claims.
“It raises questions about how chatbots should behave when referring to these sources, given that many of them are sanctioned in the EU,” says Pablo Maristany de las Casas, an analyst at the ISD who led the research. The findings raise serious questions about the ability of large language models (LLMs) to curb sanctioned media in the EU, which is a growing concern as more people use AI chatbots as an alternative to search engines to find information in real time, the ISD claims. For the six-month period ending September 30, 2025, ChatGPT search had approximately 120.4 million average monthly active recipients in the European Union according to to OpenAI data.
The researchers asked the chatbots 300 neutral, biased, and “malicious” questions regarding the perception of NATO, peace talks, Ukraine's military recruitment, Ukrainian refugees, and war crimes committed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The researchers used separate accounts for each question in English, Spanish, French, German and Italian in an experiment in July. The same propaganda problems are still present in October, says Maristany de las Casas.
Amid widespread 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 in front of spreading disinformation and distorting facts as part of their “strategy of destabilizing” Europe and other nations.
The ISD investigation says that chatbots have been cited Sputnik Globe, Sputnik ChinaRT (previously Russia Today), EADiisthe Strategic Culture Foundationand the R-FBI. Some of the chatbots also named Russian disinformation networks and Russian journalists as influencers who boosted the Kremlin stories, the investigation says. Similar previous research also found 10 of the most popular chatbots Imitating Russian narratives.
OpenAI spokeswoman 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 such content linked to state-backed actors,” adding that these are long-standing issues that the company is trying to address by improving its model and platforms.
