Incident 734: Leading AI Models Reportedly Found to Mimic Russian Disinformation in 33% of Cases and to Cite Fake Moscow News Sites

Description: An audit by NewsGuard revealed that leading chatbots, including ChatGPT-4, You.com’s Smart Assistant, and others, repeated Russian disinformation narratives in one-third of their responses. These narratives originated from a network of fake news sites created by John Mark Dougan (Incident 701). The audit tested 570 prompts across 10 AI chatbots, showing that AI remains a tool for spreading disinformation despite efforts to prevent misuse.
Editor Notes: In particular, refer to Incidents 701 and 968 for more information. Incident 701 specifically details reports on John Mark Dougan. Incident 968 focuses on studies pertaining to the Pravda disinformation network, which is a part of the wider Portal Kombat network. There is significant overlap between these incidents, along with other incidents pertaining to Russian disinformation campaigns. (For example, see Incidents 585 and 929 as well.)

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Incident Stats

Incident ID
734
Report Count
4
Incident Date
2024-06-18
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Applied Taxonomies
MIT

MIT Taxonomy Classifications

Machine-Classified
Taxonomy Details

Risk Subdomain

3.1. False or misleading information

Risk Domain

  1. Misinformation

Entity

AI

Timing

Post-deployment

Intent

Unintentional

Top 10 Generative AI Models Mimic Russian Disinformation Claims A Third of the Time, Citing Moscow-Created Fake Local News Sites as Authoritative Sources
newsguardtech.com · 2024

Russian disinformation narratives have infiltrated generative AI. A NewsGuard audit has found that the leading chatbots convincingly repeat fabricated narratives from state-affiliated sites masquerading as local news outlets in one third of…

Exclusive: Leading chatbots are spreading Russian propaganda
axios.com · 2024

The leading AI chatbots are regurgitating Russian misinformation, according to a NewsGuard report shared first with Axios.

Why it matters: Users turning to chatbots for reliable information and quick answers to all their questions are findi…

Popular Chatbots Spout Russian Misinformation, Finds Study
bankinfosecurity.com · 2024

OpenAI, Meta and 8 Other Chatbots Use Disinformation Network as Source Rashmi Ramesh (rashmiramesh_) • June 19, 2024        

Popular artificial intelligence chatbots are rife with Russian disinformation, warns NewsGuard, the rating system f…

Most AI chatbots now 'tainted,' are spreading Russian propaganda, finds study
firstpost.com · 2024

Leading generative AI models, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, are reportedly repeating Russian misinformation, according to a study by news monitoring service NewsGuard.

This revelation comes amid growing concerns about AI’s role in disseminati…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.

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