Why be surprised? AI specialist Ben Torben Nielsen offers another reason to be cautious about what overuse of chatbots can do to our perspective: They may be seeded with large amounts of propaganda:

Large Language Models (LLMs) are the AI systems powering today’s chatbots. They need massive amounts of training data from the internet. Bad actors exploit this by flooding the web with propaganda, knowing these texts will be scraped and incorporated into AI training data.

I just read a fascinating Forbes article by Tor Constantino showing how Western chatbots are now reproducing Russian propaganda. The technique? Russian propaganda outlet Pravda operates nearly 50 domains that produced 3.6 million articles in 2024 alone. AI labs scrape this content, and suddenly, propaganda flows through your favorite chatbot.

LinkedIn,” March 20, 2025

At Forbes, Constantino provides details:

A troubling trend in which most western AI chatbots are unknowingly spreading Russian propaganda has been uncovered by a NewsGuard audit published last week. A Moscow-based disinformation network known as “Pravda” — the Russian word for “truth” — has been flooding search results and web crawlers with pro-Kremlin falsehoods, causing AI systems to regurgitate misleading narratives. The Pravda network, which published 3.6 million articles in 2024 alone, is leveraging artificial intelligence to amplify Moscow’s influence at an unprecedented scale.

The audit revealed that 10 leading AI chatbots repeated false narratives pushed by Pravda 33% of the time. Shockingly, seven of these chatbots directly cited Pravda sites as legitimate sources. In an email exchange, NewsGuard analyst Isis Blachez wrote that the study does not “name names” of the AI systems most susceptible to the falsehood flow but acknowledged that the threat is widespread.

“Russian Propaganda Has Now Infected Western AI Chatbots — New Study,” March 10, 2025

Here’s the Newsguard audit.

Readers may be wondering whether China also loads chatbots with propaganda. Indeed it does. From the New York Times: “DeepSeek’s Answers Include Chinese Propaganda, Researchers Say: Since the Chinese company’s chatbot surged in popularity, researchers have documented how its answers reflect China’s view of the world. Some of its responses amplify propaganda Beijing uses to discredit critics.”

The main point is that, for a free society, digital literacy matters more than ever.