Iran just used ChatGPT to fake its way into real American news outlets

OpenAI just shut down an Iranian network pretending to be real journalists.

Seven fake writers. Almost 100 articles. Published in real outlets, worldwide.

OpenAI calls the operation Bogus Bylines. It announced the takedown two days ago.

The names were made up. Ervin B. Hoskins. Noah Lamington. Sophia Gonzalez. Michael Harrison. Ericka Feusier. Jenny Williams. Alice Johnson.

Every one of them used ChatGPT to write articles attacking America's military action in Iran.

So how did seven fake people get published in real outlets around the world?

The earliest article goes back to July last year. Then the pace picked up. Once America and Iran started actually fighting, the output jumped, and most of the war coverage runs from March this year onwards.

The outlets that ran it include Daily Kos, Middle East Monitor, and a small weekly paper in Florida called the Port St. Joe Star.

One of the outlets that published this stuff had almost two million followers on Facebook. Around 355,000 on X. More than 544,000 on Instagram.

So this wasn't some fringe blog nobody reads. Real audiences were reading what they thought were real freelance journalists.

Now here's how it worked. The operators mostly worked in Persian. They prompted ChatGPT in Persian, and it gave them material in both Persian and English. They used VPNs to get round OpenAI's existing block on direct access from Iran.

And ChatGPT didn't just write the articles.

It tailored each piece to match the submission rules of whatever outlet they were targeting. Then it drafted the pitch emails sent to editors. For one persona, Michael Harrison, they even had the model write its own biography.

So here's the twist. This isn't a propaganda office grinding out copy by hand. This is a small team using AI to do all the admin a whole network of freelancers would normally need. The pitching. The formatting. The backstory. Then publishing it all under fake names.

The personas needed to look real online too. So OpenAI found social media profiles and AI-generated profile pictures attached to the accounts.

But the cover slipped.

Ervin B. Hoskins said he was an American freelance writer. Instagram's own location settings placed the account in Iran. Meta suspended it two months ago. Three other personas — Ericka Feusier, Alice Johnson and Jenny Williams — had X accounts that were suspended around the same time.

OpenAI rated the article-placement side of this Category 4 out of six. That's the highest severity it has ever given this kind of campaign.

There was a second, smaller part of the operation too. Hostile Persian-language comments, posted on social media, including more than two dozen batches aimed at the outlet Iran International.