Apr 17, 2025 12:30:00

AI may be 'infected' with Russian propaganda

A disinformation research group has reported that AI that learns from Wikipedia is spreading Russian propaganda by using content from networks that spread pro-Russian propaganda as a source for Wikipedia and other sites.

Russia-linked Pravda network cited on Wikipedia, LLMs, and X - DFRLab

https://dfrlab.org/2025/03/12/pravda-network-wikipedia-llm-x/

According to the DFRLab, a division of the Atlantic Council that studies disinformation, content from the website Pravda (Russian for truth) and its associated network, known as the Pravda Network, which has been identified as spreading pro-Russian propaganda, is often used as a source for Wikipedia, a community note on X (formerly Twitter), and an AI-recommended source.

The Pravda Network, also known as 'Portal Kombat,' is a network of hundreds of individuals and organizations that has been spreading pro-Russian government content since 2014. While Pravda Network content has been selected as a source of some kind in the past, the number of times it has been selected as a source has increased exponentially since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Using Wikipedia's API, DFRLab found that a total of 1,627 pages contained 1,907 links to the Pravda network. The most common links were found on Russian (922 links) and Ukrainian (580 links) pages.

Based on the domains the links point to, we see that most of the links point to the domain crimea-news.com. In English, we also found localized versions of the Pravda network, such as pravda-en.com, Donbas-focused dnr-news.com, and news-pravda.com.

The Russian-language page with the link mainly contained national events using timelines, as well as regional and local political developments. The Ukrainian-language page, on the other hand, mainly covered topics related to the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war, including detailed descriptions of military operations, Russian military losses, and a timeline of the conflict. The DFRLab commented that this 'suggests a long-term strategy to shape information into historical fact by presenting a real-time timeline of information related to the war.'

'The embedding of Pravda network websites into Wikipedia is of particular concern given that Wikipedia is used as a primary source of knowledge for large-scale language models,' the DFRLab said.

In fact, when DFRLab used AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Gemini, they found that Pravda Network content was being used in the answers. Furthermore, the chatbots did not reveal any Russian ties, despite the inclusion of news sources that proved the Russian ties. Another research group, NewsGuard, also

pointed out that information from the Pravda Network was being incorporated into the AI. In addition to Wikipedia and AI, there were also cases where Pravda Network links were used in X's 'community notes.'

'Content from the Pravda network is contaminating information sources across multiple platforms, raising concerns that false claims could reach a global audience,' the DFRLab warned.