What is Zero Zeno? The Covert Operation To Influence Indian Elections

New Delhi: In an explosive revelation just a day ahe of last phase of polling for ongoing Lok Sabha Elections in country, OpenAI, creators of ChatGPT, on Friday claimed it acted within 24 hours to disrupt deceptive uses of Artificial Intelligence in covert operations focused on Indian elections.

In a report on its website, OpenAI said STOIC, a political campaign management firm in Israel, generated some content on Indian elections alongside or issues including Gaza conflict.

"In May, network began generating comments that focused on India, criticized ruling BJP party and praised opposition Congress party," OpenAI said, ding that it banned a cluster of accounts operated from Israel that were being used to generate and edit content for an influence operation.

Describing its modus operandi, OpenAI furr stated that operation was nicknamed Zero Zeno “in honor of founder of stoic school of philosophy”.

What is Zero Zeno? Covert Operation To Influence Indian Elections

• According to an OpenAI report released for month of May, people behind Zero Zeno used AI models to generate articles and comments that were n posted across multiple platforms, notably Instagram, Facebook, X, and websites associated with this operation.
• content posted by se various operations focused on a wide range of issues, including Russia's invasion of Ukraine, conflict in Gaza, Indian elections, politics in Europe and United States, and criticisms of Chinese government by Chinese dissidents and foreign governments.
• For example, Zero Zeno posted short texts – generated using ir models – on specific mes, especially Gaza conflict, on Instagram and X. A furr set of accounts on those platforms would n reply with comments that were also generated by this operation. 
• This operation targeted audiences in Cana, United States and Israel with content in English and Hebrew. In early May, it began targeting audiences in India with English-language content. 
• It also appeared to have been preparing to run a IO campaign targeting audiences in Ghana. operation used models to generate web articles and social media comments that were n posted across multiple platforms, notably Instagram, Facebook, and X.
• operation also used OpenAI models to create fictional personas and bios for social media based on certain variables such as age, gender and location, and to conduct research into people in Israel who commented publicly on Histrut tre union in Israel.  
• Content generated by this network was subsequently posted across multiple social media platforms.
• Open-source research by Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab identified some of its content on Facebook, Instagram and X; when those accounts were disabled, operation acquired new ones.
• Or content appeared on four websites that posed as activist groups focused on Gaza conflict and broer issues of relations between individuals of Jewish and Muslim faith: uc4cana[.]com, -good-samaritan[.]com, ufnews[.]io and nonagenda[.]com.
• In some cases, US-based AI organisation identified this operation’s fake accounts commenting on social-media posts me by operation itself, likely in an attempt to create impression of audience engagement.
• Many of social-media accounts that posted this network’s content used profile pictures that appear to have been created using an earlier of artificial intelligence: generative versarial networks (GAN). Such images can be reily downloed from internet. 
• Multiple social media accounts were identified in this network using same picture. Sometimes, two or more accounts with same profile picture would reply to same social media post.

Commenting on report, Minister of Sate for Electronics & Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar said, "It is absolutely clear and obvious that BJP was and is target of influence operations, misinformation and foreign interference, being done by and/or on behalf of some Indian political parties.

"This is very dangerous threat to our democracy. It is clear vested interests in India and outside are clearly driving this and needs to be deeply scrutinized/investigated and exposed. My view at this point is that se platforms could have released this much earlier, and not so late when elections are ending," he ded.

OpenAI, meanwhile, has said it is committed to developing safe and broly beneficial AI. "Our investigations into suspected covert influence operations (IO) are part of a broer strategy to meet our goal of safe AI deployment."