OpenAI Says Iranian Operatives Used Its Models to Plant Anti-US War Articles in US Media
OpenAI banned an Iranian influence operation, "Bogus Bylines," that used ChatGPT and seven fake journalist personas to plant articles in US media outlets.
"Bogus Bylines" used fake journalists
OpenAI said Iranian operatives used its models and fake personas to help plant news articles critical of the U.S. war against Iran in multiple American media outlets.
The company banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts originating in Iran in a campaign it nicknamed "Bogus Bylines." The operators created seven fake journalist personas with Western names and used them to pitch stories to small and medium-sized outlets.
How the operation worked
The personas posed as Western journalists, and for one of them the operators even asked ChatGPT to write the biography itself. The operators prompted in Persian, generated content in Persian and English, and used VPNs to hide their location.
OpenAI identified almost 100 articles published or syndicated under the operation's bylines across roughly a dozen outlets focused on international affairs, geopolitics and the Middle East. The earliest dated to July 2025 and the latest to October 2026, with output increasing after the U.S.-Iran conflict broke out.
The operators asked ChatGPT to refine drafts against specific outlets' submission rules and to write pitch emails to editors. One outlet that published the articles had nearly 2 million Facebook followers and over 544,000 on Instagram.
A second operation from Russia
OpenAI also shut down a Russian operation that used its models to run a fake on-the-ground think tank targeting Latin America with forged documents and audio scripts.
"What is most striking about these operations is that they closely resembled complex influence operations of the pre-AI age, but used AI to make some of the workflows easier," OpenAI said.
The announcement came the same day Anthropic tightened its own rules against AI misuse, marking a coordinated push by the leading AI labs against weaponized models.
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Options market and stocks to watch
AI misuse headlines keep regulatory risk alive for the whole AI complex. OpenAI is private, but its biggest backer MSFT absorbs the headline risk, and any talk of model restrictions feeds the broader AI-regulation trade.
Cybersecurity names tend to catch a bid when state-backed AI operations make news, as enterprises reassess their threat surface. Watch flow in PANW and CRWD on follow-up coverage.
The deeper market read is about AI infrastructure demand: none of this slows the buildout. Chip names like NVDA remain the purest play on continued AI spending. More on the Unusual Whales news feed.
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