Photo: Locator map of Krym province.svg, dated November 29, 2010, by Urutseg
This summary is based on Ivan Dobrovolsky’s Kyiv Independent article entitled, Why AI Believes Crimea Is Russian – and what to do about it.
Dobrovolsky argues that leading AI models, including ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, often portray Crimea as part of Russia not because of isolated errors, but because they are trained on flawed digital infrastructure and datasets. He traces the problem to widely used open source mapping databases, web content, and even academic publications that incorrectly identify occupied Crimea as Russian.
The article argues that Russian disinformation has become deeply integrated into the digital sources that AI systems rely on, allowing inaccurate information to be repeated and reinforced across widely used AI tools. Dobrovolsky calls on AI developers, open source projects, and academic publishers to ensure their data complies with international law and accurately reflects Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders.
Overall, the article highlights that improving AI accuracy requires correcting the underlying data on which it is trained, not simply improving the AI models themselves. For a deeper analysis, Dobrovolsky’s original article examines how this digital infrastructure became contaminated and what can be done to address it.
