- China used ChatGPT to generate comments, posts and cartoons
- The content exploited issues around data centers and tariffs
- The footage was shared on social media to exacerbate existing tensions
OpenAI has banned a number of accounts it says were linked to social media influence campaigns surrounding the 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 create political division in the United States.
China’s intention was to widen the gap by drumming up online engagement with AI-generated posts, OpenAI said, but the campaigns failed to gain traction.
China is exacerbating existing tensions
The negative effects of data center construction and the additional costs imposed on consumers by tariffs are existing areas of contention in American society, but they were not narratives invented by China.
Instead, according to OpenAI, these campaigns were designed to increase the scope of the problems and expand their visibility among online groups and on social media such as X.
This is the first time that OpenAI models have been used in a Chinese foreign influence campaign, a spokesman said Axios.
OpenAI said a Chinese government contractor was responsible for the data center campaign, which shared posts that draw on existing concerns about power grid capacity and electricity prices in areas where data centers were planned or built.
OpenAI’s account of a foreign country using artificial intelligence to exploit political issues adds some limited validity to recent Republican claims that the entire data center opposition movement is a Chinese influence campaign, but does little to address the very real, tangible effects that data center projects are having on communities in the United States.
A group of Republicans recently called on FBI Director Kash Patel to investigate anti-data center sentiment, arguing that the rising tide of opposition is being fueled by China, as the inclusion of similar wording around water use, energy restrictions, transparency around permitting and the use of utility bills “language too similar to be coincidental.”
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews and opinions in your feeds.
