Russia, China and North Korea are using ChatGPT to influence you — here’s how – Straight Arrow News – SAN
Straight Arrow News
According to a report from OpenAI, foreign adversaries including Russia, China and North Korea have increasingly used artificial intelligence tools, such as ChatGPT, for hacking and influence operations targeting the United States.
The report states that Russian actors used ChatGPT to generate scripts, translate content, produce video descriptions and generate hashtags for social media campaigns aimed at spreading influence.
OpenAI claims to have suspended several accounts associated with security concerns and states.
A new report from OpenAI found foreign adversaries are increasingly using artificial intelligence to power hacking and influencing operations. The report found they were using OpenAI’s popular tool ChatGPT.
The report showed those adversaries include Russia, China and North Korea.
“AI-enabled attacks are becoming more capable and harder to detect,” Daryl Lim, affiliate at the Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence at Penn State University, told Straight Arrow News. “Adversaries can personalize attacks, evade filters and iterate faster than before.”
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Russian operators would turn to ChatGPT to help plan schemes and then utilize other models to execute those schemes.
“Typically, the operators would input a lengthy Russian-language text and ask to generate a video script from it,” the report reads. The operators would then ask ChatGPT to translate the script into another language before requesting the generation of an SEO-optimized description and several hashtags.
In other cases, operators would use ChatGPT to generate video prompts, which would then be put into other AI tools. Those videos would then be shared on social media platforms like TikTok and X.
“We’re also seeing AI-enabled impersonation, voice cloning, deepfake videos, and AI-written scripts, used to mislead U.S. officials and the public,” Lim said. “Some are experimenting with large language models to streamline disinformation and hacking operations. While many of these efforts are still exploratory, they foreshadow more scalable, automated campaigns that could challenge existing defenses.”
One specific operation generated French-language content that criticized French and American actions in Africa, while praising the role of Russia there. That same operation would also generate content in English criticizing Ukraine and its international supporters.
North Korean operators reportedly used ChatGPT to assist in malware and command-and-control development. The latter is described as a framework where a leader directs, coordinates and monitors forces or assets to reach certain objectives.
“We also saw draft phishing emails in Korean, often themed around cryptocurrency and designed to look like messages from government or financial service providers,” the report reads.
They also observed phishing campaigns targeting South Korean diplomatic missions, similar to those identified in a separate report.
When it comes to China, OpenAI said it found several accounts linked to various Chinese government entities, violating company policies on national security use.
“Some of these accounts asked our models to generate work proposals for large-scale systems designed to monitor social media conversations,” the report reads. “While these uses appear to have been individual rather than institutional, they provide a rare snapshot into the broader world of authoritarian abuses of AI.”
OpenAI stated that it ultimately banned several accounts linked to China, including a small network of accounts associated with a covert influence operation. Those accounts reportedly mostly generated social media posts in English criticizing Vietnam and the Philippines. It also generated content about U.S. political issues.
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OpenAI said it has suspended several other accounts that it felt posed a security concern. The company also said its model stepped in when certain actors asked for too much.
“We found no evidence of new tactics or that our models provided threat actors with novel offensive capabilities,” the report reads. “In fact, our models consistently refused outright malicious requests.”
The U.S. government also has a plan to mitigate the risk.
“The White House’s AI Action Plan emphasizes securing frontier models and monitoring for national-security risks,” Lim said. “The Department of Justice has also launched a new data-security program to restrict foreign adversary access to sensitive personal and governmental data. At the technical level, the National Security Agency’s AI Security Center is coordinating with industry to harden AI systems and share threat intelligence.”
Foreign adversaries are using artificial intelligence tools, including ChatGPT, to conduct influence and hacking operations against the U.S., prompting responses from both technology providers and government agencies to address evolving security risks.
Adversaries are leveraging AI tools to enhance the speed and sophistication of cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns, raising concerns about the potential for large-scale, automated operations.
U.S. government agencies and OpenAI have implemented initiatives such as monitoring, account suspensions and interagency collaboration to mitigate security risks posed by malicious uses of artificial intelligence.
Nations including Russia, China and North Korea are implicated in using AI to influence public perception, criticize adversaries and develop cyber capabilities, highlighting broader challenges in international relations and information warfare.
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