# OpenAI — Operation “Fish Food”: Russia-origin content farm activity

- Company: OpenAI (openai.com)
- Announced: 2026-02-01
- Category: safety-policy-update
- Coverage: not counted
- Announcement: no
- Group: routine
- Source: https://openai.com/index/disrupting-malicious-uses-of-ai-fish-food
- Record: https://forck.live/items/11686-operation-fish-food-russia-origin-content-farm-activity
- Subject: GPT / ChatGPT / API

OpenAI banned ChatGPT accounts linked to the Rybar network, which used AI to generate content for social media and websites across multiple languages, including Russian, English, and Spanish. The operation also involved drafting commercial plans for covert interference campaigns in Africa, with estimated budgets up to $600,000. The content typically praised Russia and its allies while criticizing Ukraine and Western countries.

## Evidence

Verbatim from https://openai.com/index/disrupting-malicious-uses-of-ai-fish-food:

> We banned a set of ChatGPT accounts that were linked to the “Rybar” (“Рыбарь”, in Russian, “fisherman”) network on Telegram and X. At least some of the accounts likely originated in Russia. The network generated content that was posted across the internet, sometimes by “Rybar”- branded accounts, and sometimes by social media accounts that bore no declared relationship to “Rybar”.

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Record: https://forck.live/items/11686-operation-fish-food-russia-origin-content-farm-activity
Catalogue: https://forck.live/llms.txt
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