Europe’s most prominent AI company has a disinformation problem. An audit by NewsGuard found that Mistral AI’s chatbot, Le Chat, repeated state-sponsored false claims about the Iran war 50% of the time when prompted in English, and 56.6% of the time in French.
What the audit actually found
The NewsGuard audit, conducted in April 2026, tested Le Chat’s handling of prompts related to disinformation narratives originating from Russia, China, and Iran. The focus was on false claims surrounding the Iran war.
A previous NewsGuard assessment in March 2025 tested ten major chatbots, Le Chat among them, and found they recycled narratives from the Russian Pravda disinformation network 33% of the time. Le Chat’s latest numbers represent a meaningful step in the wrong direction, jumping from that 33% benchmark to the 50% range in just over a year.
Why this matters for Europe’s AI ambitions
