**OpenAI** announced on Tuesday the ban of several Russian **ChatGPT** accounts. These accounts reportedly utilized VPNs to circumvent geographical restrictions, employing the AI tool to produce social media posts and comments disseminated across platforms such as **Substack**, **Telegram**, **X**, **Facebook**, and **LinkedIn**. ### The International Burke Institute (IBI) Facade The targeted accounts were found promoting the **International Burke Institute (IBI)**, which **OpenAI** described as a self-proclaimed 'expert community' based in Israel. The investigation, initially focused on AI-generated social media content, uncovered a broader influence operation. "What began as an investigation into AI-generated social media posts led us to a much broader influence operation, built around a website containing copied and misattributed academic work, a 'sovereignty' index that cast Russia in a favourable light, and efforts to disguise the operators' Russian origins," **OpenAI** stated. ### Limited Reach, Sophisticated Infrastructure Despite the sophisticated nature of the operation, its audience reach was assessed as "relatively small." **Telegram** channels attracted the most users, accumulating approximately 10-20,000 followers each. The majority of the generated content was in English, with operators instructing **ChatGPT** to obscure any linguistic indicators of their Russian origin. The **IBI** brand is linked to the website "ibi[.]institute," registered in February 2025. It purports to be a global community of experts in economics, politics, sociology, and international relations. While there's no direct evidence of **ChatGPT** being used to create articles on the site, many appear to be plagiarized academic works, some with false attribution. Other articles show signs of being drafted by a Slavic speaker and then machine-translated into English. ### The 'Sovereignty Index' Propaganda **OpenAI** noted that this covert campaign is distinct from other documented Russia-linked influence operations. A key aspect was the creation of a 'sovereignty index,' promoted by the alleged think tank to portray Russia favorably and criticize Western nations. The website details the **Sovereignty Index**, also known as the **Burke Index**, which considers seven indicators: political, economic, technological, information, cultural, cognitive, and military sovereignty. Each area is scored out of 100, based on national and global data, and expert assessments, culminating in a **Cumulative Sovereignty Index** ranging from 100-700. Reports on various countries' sovereignty, as measured by this index, were also featured. The U.S. led with 650.9, followed by China (649.1), Switzerland (610.7), and Russia (601.4). The report on Russia provided a positive assessment: *"In 2025, Russia is a state with a high level of sovereignty and record military and economic self-sufficiency, a strong scientific and cultural base, but with limited flexibility of the civilian economy and dependence on internal administrative capital. The main vectors of strengthening are demography, investments in high technologies and gradual liberalization in non-military science and innovation. The sovereignty profile indicates that by 2025 Russia has established a stable and high level of national sovereignty, from financial and military self-sufficiency to digital and cultural control over the internal environment. The country has become one of the three world powers with full digital and military nuclear sovereignty. Demographic aging, innovation constraints, and selective global integration remain key challenges, requiring a balance between closure and modernization."* ### AI as a Supporting Tool for Deception The activity extended beyond content generation for **IBI**. One **ChatGPT** user, for instance, used the tool to create a profile picture for a **Telegram** channel called "American Observer" and requested Russian-language summaries of its activities. "The significance of the operation lies less in the audience it reached, however, than in the infrastructure it had built," **OpenAI** emphasized. "While the actors only used **ChatGPT** to produce isolated promotional posts, those posts pointed to an otherwise credible-appearing institution, complete with purported experts, republished academic work and a purported proprietary risk index." This incident highlights how influence actors can leverage AI as a supplementary tool within broader efforts to fabricate authority, obscure the origins of favored narratives, and establish assets scalable over time. It also demonstrates how such supporting AI use can inadvertently lead to the exposure of the larger operation.