A North Korea flag flutters next to concertina wire at the North Korean embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, March 9, 2017. Reuters-Yonhap

OpenAI, a U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) firm, said Friday it has banned user accounts that were potentially used to facilitate a deceptive employment scheme possibly connected to North Korea, as it seeks to ensure its AI models are not utilized for malicious purposes.

In an updated report, the ChatGPT maker revealed that actors in question generated content consisting of personal documentation for fictitious "job applicants," such as resumes, online job profiles and cover letters as it pointed to the North's scheme to deploy IT workers overseas to create hard currency to support the Pyongyang regime.

"The activity we observed is consistent with the tactics, techniques and procedures Microsoft and Google attributed to an IT worker scheme potentially connected to North Korea," the company said in the report, titled "Disrupting malicious uses of our models."

"While we cannot determine the locations or nationalities of the actors, the activity we disrupted shared characteristics publicly reported in relation to North Korean state efforts to funnel income through deceptive hiring schemes, where individuals fraudulently obtain positions at Western companies to support the regime's financial network," it added.

The actors also generated content that consisted of creating "support" personas used to provide reference checks for the "job applicants" and refer them for employment opportunities.

"In parallel, the operators crafted social media posts to recruit real people to support their schemes," the company said. "These included, for example, individuals willing to receive and host laptops from their home or lend their identities to the scheme to enable the applicants to pass background checks."

The company's AI models also appeared to have been used for interviews to generate plausible responses to technical and behavioral questions, it said.

The report came as Seoul and Washington have been cracking down on Pyongyang's use of IT workers overseas through deceptive means as their generation of revenue is likely to help bankroll the recalcitrant regime's nuclear and ballistic missile programs. (Yonhap)