- China used ChatGPT to generate comments, posts and cartoons
- The content took advantage of issues surrounding data centers and tariffs.
- The material was shared on social networks to exacerbate existing tensions.
OpenAI has banned a number of accounts that it says were linked to social media influence campaigns around growing opposition to data centers and President Trump’s tariffs on foreign imports.
The two campaigns, called “Data Center Bandwagon” and “Tech and Tariffs,” used ChatGPT to generate posts, comments and cartoons intended to sow political division in the United States.
China’s intention was to deepen the divide by encouraging online participation with AI-generated posts, OpenAI said, but the campaigns failed to gain traction.
China exacerbates existing tensions
The negative effects of data center construction and the additional costs imposed on consumers by tariffs are existing areas of contention within American society, but they were not narratives invented by China.
Instead, according to OpenAI, these campaigns were designed to increase the scale of the issues and broaden their visibility among online groups and on social media sites like X.
It is the first time OpenAI models have been used in a Chinese foreign influence campaign, a spokesperson said. axios.
OpenAI said a Chinese government contractor was responsible for the data center campaign, which shared posts based on existing concerns around power grid capacity and electricity prices in areas where data centers were planned or built.
OpenAI’s account of a foreign country using AI to capitalize on political issues adds some limited validity to recent Republican claims that the entire anti-data center movement is a Chinese influence campaign, but does little to address the very real and tangible effects that data center projects are having on local communities in the United States.
A group of Republicans recently called on FBI Director Kash Patel to investigate anti-data center sentiment, alleging that China is fueling the growing wave of opposition as the inclusion of similar phrases about water use, energy limitations, transparency around approval and utility bills use “language too similar to be coincidental.”
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