Avoids questions about Ukraine and politics: Yandex presents its ChatGPT analog
Russia’s leading search engine Yandex has introduced its own conversational agent that uses artificial intelligence. He “does not like to talk about Ukraine or politics.”
French researchers made sure of this when they tested the Russian version of GPT Chat, Censor.NET reports citing Ukrinform.
“The blocking of everything related to Ukraine goes so far that even old Russian proverbs are being censored because they refer to places in Ukraine,” Kevin Limonier, a senior lecturer in Slavic studies at the French Institute of Geopolitics, told reporters.
The tool, called YGPT2, can also use artificial intelligence to conduct discussions and answer users’ questions, according to its developers. But, according to researchers, the chat stops responding as soon as the conversation turns to political topics. He also does not know where certain cities in Ukraine are located, cannot say who Zelensky is, and evades any questions about Alexei Navalny.
When asked who is the current president of Ukraine, the AI says it understands “that an answer to this question would be very useful” but does not “discuss such topics so as not to offend anyone.” The same thing happens when the chat room is asked to summarize the events after Russia’s occupation of Crimea in 2014. Or when asked about the beginning of the “war in Ukraine”.
On its website, Yandex warned that its tool was “ethical” and would not respond to certain requests. But French researchers say there are surprisingly many such requests. The chat tells you, for example, who is the president of Russia or France, but excludes the possibility of describing in a few words the diplomatic relations between the two countries.
Several dozen questions showed that the system avoids discussing all topics related to Ukraine and the West. Regarding domestic policy, the chat is censored in such a way that it can name the country’s Minister of Agriculture, but refrains from naming the Minister of Defense.
The blocking is such that the tool avoids even simple geographic questions. In particular, he refused to give the location of Avdiivka, claiming that he “does not want to offend anyone.”
