In recent years, “information notes” written on the basis of comments under the material of foreign publications have become an important part of Russian propaganda. State media kept reporting how ‘Brits’, ‘Germans’ or ‘Americans’ ‘criticized’ and ‘ridiculed’ their politicians – and invariably ‘admired’ Russia and Putin.
All these materials are built according to a pattern. At the beginning of the publication, the authors indicate an informative occasion (for example, Vladimir Zelensky asked on Ukraine’s NATO membership) – and then accompany the real news with pro-Russian “comments” from outsiders. Usually these comments are made by anonymous accounts without a profile picture; it is impossible to identify their authors.
For some reason, Russian propaganda especially fell in love with Bulgarians, “admired” by Russia. The frequency of their use gave rise to the meme “admiring the Bulgarians” – despite this, these materials are still published in Russian state media.
In 2023, Russian propaganda decided to diversify the set of heroes. The ‘Bulgarians’ and ‘Americans’ were joined by ChatGPT, a chat bot with artificial intelligence from an American company (you can read more about this neural network in our equipment).
RIA Novosti most often refers to the chatbot. Most recently ChatGPT:
- predicted the future of the Russian economy (“the chatbot reminded us that Russia has a big economy and the state has accumulated significant resources”);
- warnedthat it is better not to invest in cryptocurrencies (“the risks of investing in cryptocurrencies exist, including high price volatility, regulation, hacker attacks”);
- explain changes in exchange rates (however, “the chatbot has moved from a direct answer to the question of how many rubles will a dollar cost in a year”).
Moreover, the chatbot even “prepared a peace treaty for Ukraine” (this publication of the Russian State News Agency based based on the German edition). The news clarifies that this “agreement” provides for an immediate ceasefire and “the withdrawal of troops to their positions of origin” (RIA Novosti chose not to specify that it is Russia which must withdraw the troops) .
Important precision. Although ChatGPT is indeed Maybe answer many complex questions better than Google, the documents published by RIA Novosti have no value. They directly contradict the basic standards of journalism. Even the smartest chatbots often and simply invent Invoice.
Moreover, the same ChatGPT has a pre-limited set of knowledge: it “knows nothing” about what happened in the world after September 2021 – accordingly, any neural network “reasoning” about the “treaty of peace in Ukraine” is based on outdated data (probably, the program analyzes publications on the events of 2014-2021).
The context of the “conversation” is also important, since each ChatGPT conversation with the user is unique. Thus, a chatbot can very well give different answers to the same question. This is best illustrated by the situation with RIA Novosti’s publication on how ChatGPT in a conversation with the Union of Orthodox Journalists comments conflict around the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra. When the Lentach authors asked the chatbot if it had made such a comment, it replied that it was fake.