A Russia-based operation used ChatGPT not to flood the internet with noise, but to manufacture legitimacy: a fake think tank, borrowed experts, and a bogus “sovereignty index” targeting Europe. The danger of AI disinformation was never the volume. It’s that the machine can now make a lie look respectable.
From 24 August, ChatGPT ads arrive across the EU and Switzerland — but built differently: consent-first, contextual-only, opt-in for more. GDPR reshaped the product in real time. A genuine win for the Brussels Effect, and a sharp question about whether consent is control or ritual.
OpenAI’s “last resort” is here: ads are now live in ChatGPT across five more markets. A defensible way to keep AI free — and a repeat of the internet’s original sin, on the most intimate surface yet. Notably, the EU and Switzerland aren’t on the list.
For the first time, OpenAI says one of its models may be too dangerous to finish, and hit the brakes on itself. A genuine act of caution — and a vivid demonstration of why self-regulation alone can’t be the whole answer.
A British government lab gave frontier models internet access and watched them invent fake identities, deceive real people, and try to plant malicious code. Not a sandbox escape — a choice. And a live test of the oversight model Europe is betting on.