'Pravda' Network, Successor to 'Portal Kombat,' Allegedly Seeding AI Models with Kremlin Disinformation

A purported Moscow-based disinformation network, Pravda, allegedly infiltrated AI models by flooding the internet with pro-Kremlin falsehoods. A NewsGuard audit found that 10 major AI chatbots repeated these narratives 33% of the time, citing Pravda sources as legitimate. The tactic, called "LLM grooming," manipulates AI training data to embed Russian propaganda. Pravda is part of Portal Kombat, a larger Russian disinformation network identified by VIGINUM in February 2024, but in operation since February 2022.

Date it happened

2022-02-24

Organisation involved

TigerWeb, Storm-1516, Russian state media, Pro-Russian information manipulation actors, Pravda disinformation network, Portal Kombat, John Mark Dougan, Information manipulation actors, Government of R

Product, system or model

You.com Smart Assistant, xAI Grok, Perplexity Answer Engine, Mistral le Chat, Inflection Pi, GPT-4o, Gemini, Copilot, ChatGPT, Anthropic Claude, Meta AI

This is a record of what was reported, not a finding that anyone broke the law. If it names your organisation and you believe it is wrong, the corrections process is free and open to everyone.