This qualitative content analysis conducted in November 2024 examines how four AI chatbots – OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude – frame the Russia–Ukraine war. The chatbots generally utilized similar emphasis, tonality, and moral judgements as most US and European news organizations, with Russia framed as an “aggressor” and Ukraine as a victim of the aggression. These framing similarities were even more pronounced in outputs for Russian and Ukrainian identity-specific prompts. However, AI chatbots had a hard time contextualizing Russian government propaganda. Thus, AI chatbots are unreliable narrators, prone to bias and a superficial understanding of complex geopolitical realities. Until these fundamental issues of reliability and bias are resolved, AI chatbots as news sources should be treated with significant skepticism.
Roman et al. (Sun,) studied this question.