OpenAI Operation Stop News Report

OpenAI has banned a set of accounts associated with a recidivist covert influence operation originating in Russia. This operation, previously identified as "Stop News" in October 2024, utilized AI models to generate content for fake news outlets targeting Africa and the UK, often operating through a marketing company.

Technical Execution and AI Tooling

The operation evolved its tactics to focus more on text generation and video production rather than the high volume of image generation seen in previous iterations. This shift aligns with findings from the French digital agency VIGINUM, which noted a drastic fall in the use of AI-generated images following industry reports from Meta and OpenAI.

Video Production Workflow

The actors used ChatGPT to facilitate the creation of short, news-style videos through a multi-step process:

  1. Scripting and Translation: Operators input lengthy Russian-language texts and used ChatGPT to generate video scripts, which were then translated into French.
  2. SEO Optimization: The models were used to generate SEO-optimized descriptions and hashtags for social media distribution.
  3. Prompt Engineering for Third-Party Tools: In complex cases, operators used ChatGPT to break Russian scripts into two-sentence snippets and generate specific video prompts for each snippet to be used with other, non-OpenAI AI models.

While ChatGPT was used for scripting and prompting, the final AI-generated newsreaders seen on TikTok and YouTube were not created using OpenAI models. The operation utilized multiple AI tools across different providers to assemble its final content.

Content Categories and Objectives

Influence activity fell into three primary categories:

  • Geopolitical Narratives: Generation of French-language content criticizing France and the United States in Africa while praising Russia, and English-language content criticizing Ukraine and its international supporters.
  • Brand Legitimacy: Creation of promotional articles and Google ad texts for "Newstop Africa." Some articles intentionally grouped the Newstop brand with legitimate news outlets to create an illusion of credibility by association.
  • Commercial Activity: Generation of promotional materials for Russian commercial companies, including ads for unlicensed online gambling. OpenAI notes that this mix of influence operations and traditional advertising is consistent with a commercial company running covert operations for hire.

Impact and Reach Assessment

Despite the increased technical complexity of the content, the operation achieved limited audience resonance. As of August 2025, the core "Newstop Africa" X account had only 172 followers, with a maximum of four retweets on any single post.

Platform Metrics

  • TikTok: The channel featuring the AI newsreader had approximately 1,900 followers and 5,855 total likes across 56 videos, with views ranging from 87 to 63,300.
  • YouTube: The channel recorded approximately 255,000 views across 50 videos, averaging 5,100 views per video, though there was no evidence of wide re-sharing or media citation.

Breakout Scale Reclassification

OpenAI previously categorized this operation as Category 3 on the Breakout Scale due to perceived "information partnerships" with UK-based websites. However, subsequent research by VIGINUM and open-source investigators revealed these partnerships were fictional and achieved by exploiting technical flaws on external sites to inject content. Consequently, OpenAI has downgraded the operation's assessment to Category 2, indicating activity across multiple platforms without significant breakout into authentic communities.

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