Exclusive: Russian disinfo floods AI chatbots, study finds [View all]

Source: Axios

7 hours ago


A Russian disinformation effort that flooded the web with false claims and propaganda continues to impact the output of major AI chatbots, according to a new report from NewsGuard, shared first with Axios.

Why it matters: The study, which expands on initial findings from last year, comes amid reports that the U.S. is pausing some of its efforts to counter Russian cyber activities.

Driving the news: NewsGuard says that a Moscow-based disinformation network named "Pravda" (the Russian word for truth) is spreading falsehoods across the web.

Rather than directly sway people, it aims to influence AI chatbot results.

More than 3.6 million articles were published last year, finding their way into leading Western chatbots, according to the American Sunlight Project.

"By flooding search results and web crawlers with pro-Kremlin falsehoods, the network is distorting how large language models process and present news and information," NewsGuard said in its report.

Newsguard said it studied 10 major chatbots—including those from Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, You.com, xAI, Anthropic, Meta, Mistral and Perplexity—and found that a third of the time they recycled arguments made by the Pravda network.

The Pravda network launched in April 2022, following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and has since grown to cover 49 countries and dozens of languages, NewsGuard said.

Of the 150 sites in the network, about 40 are Russian-language sites using domain names referencing various regions of Ukraine.

A small number are more focused on themes than regions, it said.

Pravda is not producing original content itself, NewsGuard says, but instead is aggregating content from others, including Russian state media and pro-Kremlin influencers.