OpenAI banned a “cluster” of ChatGPT accounts that it claims were part of a pro-Russia operation aimed at bashing Western countries and promoting a think tank with misattributed academic research.
The company said in a blog post this week that the banned ChatGPT users used VPNs to get around its restriction on Russian users and then used its tech to create social posts promoting the International Burke Institute, a think tank that describes itself as an “expert community” based in Israel, but which OpenAI says is the “core” of a Russian influence operation.
According to OpenAI, the think tank, the website of which is still online, claims to include among its contributors notable figures like American linguist and intellectual Noam Chomsky as well as American political scientist and author Francis Fukuyama. Neither Fukuyama nor Chomsky responded immediately to requests for comment from Fortune. One such author who was listed on the site didn’t know the website was using her name until Fortune reached out for comment. Other listings include experts who passed away before the IBI was founded, such as Shlomo Avineri and Jiang Ping.
OpenAI said the website, which was registered in February 2025, also included a “sovereignty index” that favored Russia as well as dozens of articles with misattributed authors. A scan by Fortune of the Burke Institute’s website on the Wayback Machine reveals that while it existed as of February last year, nothing was published on the page prior to October 2025.
The institute, in response to reporting by French outlet Le Monde on OpenAI’s claims, doubled down with a statement that said it rejected the idea it was not a legitimate think tank.
“The fact that third parties use or cite an IBI publication, the Institute’s name, or findings from the Sovereignty Index does not, in itself, constitute evidence of cooperation, coordination, funding, or a common underlying purpose.”
The Burke Institute did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fortune sent to the email listed publicly on its website. OpenAI said that according to its research, a handful of individuals in Israel represented the Burke Institute in interviews and at conferences.
Using real researchers’ names
The AI company’s review of the Burke Institute’s articles found 34 of 36 were real academic articles misattributed to other authors. A screenshot published by OpenAI showed a legitimate article on the Burke Institute’s website on migration governance that was taken from the Migration Policy Institute but misattributed to Kate Howell, a professor of food science at the University of Melbourne, with a headshot taken from the internet. Since OpenAI published its blog post, the website changed the article’s attribution to one of the real authors, Kate Hooper, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. Hooper did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Another professor listed as an expert on the Burke Institute’s website was Susan Ariel Aaronson, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University. A legitimate article she authored for the Centre for International Governance Innovation was posted on the website with a link to download.
Yet, Aaronson, who is also a co-principal investigator for the NSF-NIST Institute for Trustworthy AI in Law & Society (TRAILS), told Fortune she was not associated in any way with the Burke Institute. Reached by phone, she said the situation was disturbing.
“Trust is really important in the governance of AI, and here you have this really weird, you know, situation causing substantial distrust, and so it’s just really disturbing,” she said.
She also lamented that there is little regulation at the federal level to deal with such instances, and that it needs to be handled from the top.
“The Trump administration is doing nothing to effectively govern it, and is governing AI in an opaque manner. That is opacity does not build trust,” she added.
Other articles on the Burke Institute’s website appear to be translated into English from a Slavic language, based on clues like the use of the word “svetofor,” which means traffic light in several Slavic languages, including Russian, according to OpenAI.
The AI company claims the ChatGPT users created numerous social posts to promote the institute, some of which came from accounts with the International Burke Institute name and branding. Other posts came from made-up individuals that promoted the institute on Facebook, LinkedIn, and X as well as Substack and Telegram.
OpenAI said posts from individual accounts “only received low numbers of views” and the official accounts for the institute had “low subscriber numbers.” Still, on the instant messaging platform Telegram, the users were able to attract a larger audience of between 10,000 and 20,000 followers per channel.
Despite what OpenAI claims is a small following, the company’s findings show how Russia-linked actors have reportedly used AI to step up their propaganda campaigns.
Earlier this year, OpenAI said it disrupted another operation it said originated in Russia, that used ChatGPT to generate German-language political content ahead of Germany’s federal election. The campaign criticized the U.S. and NATO and distributed content through Telegram and X and created AI-generated material supporting Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland party.
Russian-speaking cybercriminals also used SpaceX’s AI coding assistant Cursor to hack into a Belgian chemical company along with six other companies this year alone, according to a report by Reuters citing data from cybersecurity company Gambit Security.
The company said in a blog post this week that the banned ChatGPT users used VPNs to get around its restriction on Russian users and then used its tech to create social posts promoting the International Burke Institute, a think tank that describes itself as an “expert community” based in Israel, but which OpenAI says is the “core” of a Russian influence operation.
