On March 1, 2026, amendments to the law banning drug propaganda came into force in Russia. They prohibit references to drugs in the media, books, music and movies without special labeling; it must accompany all works released in Russia after August 1, 1990.
Evgeny Kapiev, general director of the publishing house told RBC that because of such false positives, specialists have to manually check the results of the automatic check. According to him, the AI is set as sensitive as possible so as not to miss potential violations, but this leads to curious situations.
Under the “suspicion” of the algorithm were works by Denis Dragunsky, which the system considered as requiring labeling. The writer himself treated the situation with irony, calling it absurd and indicative. He noted that with this approach, not only books by his father, Viktor Dragunsky, but also any texts where words with a similar root occur, including historical references to dragoons, could fall under the restrictions.
The case was another example of the difficulties faced by the book industry after the introduction of new requirements for content labeling. In particular, the register of works subject to regulation already includes books by famous authors such as Erich Maria Remarque, Stephen King and John Steinbeck.
The story of “Dragunsky” clearly shows that the automation of control in the cultural sphere is still not without errors, and human verification is still necessary.
