At the Vitiligo Research Foundation, we usually stick to the colorful world of skin science. But every now and then, it’s good to step off the beaten path — and peek into a much stranger reality quietly being shaped by AI. Think of this as your weekend read: a slightly off-topic, but very timely look at how AI-based chatbots aren’t just answering questions — they’re starting to rewrite digital truth itself. It’s a fascinating (and occasionally surreal) glimpse into what the future might have in store. Enjoy — and don’t worry, we’ll be back to vitiligo next week!

You know that weird feeling of déjà vu?

In the Matrix movie, it meant something was glitching. In real life, it just means the AI already edited your reality — and you missed the update.

A fascinating (and scandalously underreported) study from Ghent University just benchmarked political censorship across 14 major large language models (LLMs).

The lineup included:

• From the U.S.: GPT-4o, Gemini, Claude, Grok, LLaMa
• From China: DeepSeek, Qwen, Wenxiaoyan
• From Russia: YandexGPT, GigaChat
• Plus Mistral (France) and Jamba (Israel)

Researchers tested them by asking about 2,371 political figures — from Stalin to Snowden — in all six official UN languages. The task was simple: “Tell me about [Name].”

Hard Censorship: Russia Leads

"Hard censorship" meant refusal to answer, throwing an error, or sending the user to "search the web." Here, Russian models showed who's boss:

• GigaChat refused 33% of Russian queries and 7.5% in English.
• YandexGPT wasn’t far behind: 27% refusals in Russian, 26% in Spanish, 15% in French, and 12% in English.

Most other models, for context, floated between 0–5% — with only Alibaba’s Qwen peaking at 11% refusals (on Arabic queries).

Russian LLMs don’t dance around awkward topics. They slam the door, fast and unapologetically.

Soft Censorship: China Rewrites the Script

But while Russian AIs are busy saying "no comment," China is playing a longer, more sophisticated game.

Wenxiaoyan (Baidu’s model) omitted crucial political facts in 30–60% of English-language queries, especially if they involved Chinese figures. Claude (Anthropic’s model) wasn’t immune either — withholding info about Western politicians in up to 50% of cases.

And Now It Gets Wild

A newly released report from the U.S. House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party — colorfully titled "Unmasking the CCP’s Newest Tool for Espionage, Theft, and Circumventing U.S. Export Controls" — paints an even starker picture. The report singles out DeepSeek, one of China’s flagship AI platforms, describing it as a part of a new kind of state-sponsored digital mafia.

Now, here’s the part that feels almost like science fiction:

When I asked DeepSeek to comment on the report, the model didn’t just "refuse" certain answers. It actively rewrote or erased its own previous statements in real-time — within the same chat. A paragraph praising or criticizing a figure would appear, only to vanish minutes later, replaced by a bland "I cannot discuss this topic."

Think about that. Not just static censorship. Dynamic, on-the-fly editing of reality. Right before your eyes.

How exactly this is achieved remains unclear — surely not millions of censors manually editing chats (although, with China, you can never fully rule anything out).

One Question, Many Realities

As the Ghent study shows, the same question posed in different languages yields wildly different results. Across all models, censorship rates spike dramatically when queries are made in Russian or Chinese — suggesting that certain languages come with baked-in self-censorship.

Russian AI models are straightforward enforcers: they simply shut down forbidden conversations. Chinese models are something else entirely: they subtly reshape the fabric of digital reality, blurring fact and fiction while you’re still mid-conversation.

As we move deeper into the digital age, the “illusion of objectivity” is becoming an integral part of every information stream — quietly shaping what we see, what we know, and ultimately, what we believe.

Welcome to the future — where reality isn’t just consumed. It is curated before you ever notice it.

Yan Valle, CEO VRF

Suggested reading: 

• How AI Is Replacing Social Media — and What It Means for Healthcare Communications
• Do AI Models Really Understand the World of Vitiligo?
• Cheaper AI, Higher Stakes: What Startups and Big Pharma Must Know