OpenAI says China-based actors stoking opposition to AI data centres

China-based actors are likely behind the use of ChatGPT for “covert influence operations” aimed at stoking opposition to data centres in the United States, OpenAI has said.

In a research report released on Wednesday, the company behind the world’s most popular AI chatbot said it had banned a cluster of accounts likely based in China for attempting to “manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI”.

OpenAI, whose release of ChatGPT in 2022 kicked off a global frenzy around AI, said the accounts were used to generate social media comments and images that blamed data centres for rising electricity prices in communities across the US.

Among other content, the accounts generated a comic strip showing a cigar-chomping businessman holding bags marked with dollar signs as a family reacted in shock to their electricity bill, according to the San Francisco-based company.

OpenAI said a second cluster of accounts had generated content casting US tariffs as an effort to “dominate technological competition” with China, and specified that the material should not mention Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

While the campaign sought to “exploit and amplify existing public concerns” about energy prices, OpenAI found no evidence that it had a “meaningful” influence, the company said.

“Foreign influence operations have long sought to latch onto existing local issues and sincerely held beliefs, using them to build credibility, amplify divisions or exacerbate public distrust,” the ChatGPT creator said.

“In this case, the operators attempted to covertly insert themselves into an ongoing American debate about the future of the country’s AI capabilities while hiding who they were and what motivated them.”

China’s embassy in Washington, DC, said it was not familiar with the report but that it opposed “any groundless attacks or smears against China”.

“AI is profoundly changing the way people work and live. It is a new frontier for all humanity,” an embassy spokesperson said in a statement provided to Al Jazeera.

“China believes in a people-centered approach to AI and advocates openness and inclusiveness to ensure AI is a force for good and for all.”

OpenAI is the latest prominent voice to suggest foreign influence could be behind opposition to AI in the US.

In May, Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum told a policy event hosted by Breitbart News that the public’s increasingly negative sentiment towards the construction of data centres was not “organic” and could, in some cases, be linked to “foreign-sourced dark money”.

Darren Linvill, a professor at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina, who studies foreign influence campaigns, expressed doubt that the campaign identified by OpenAI or any other coordinated effort would have much impact on the “volume or tone” of the public debate.

“My team is very familiar with the work of various Chinese influence actors, and the AI work China has done to date has been interesting but not effective,” Linvill told Al Jazeera.