AI Company Plays Wack-A-Mole To Keep Chinese Propagandists From Using ChatGPT To Sow Division In American Politics

Suspected Chinese operatives are using ChatGPT to fuel propaganda efforts targeting American political discourse, according to a Thursday threat report from OpenAI.

The company said Chinese actors leveraged its model to generate posts that played both sides of hot-button U.S. issues, mocked President Donald Trump’s tariff regime and spread politically charged content across TikTok, X, Reddit and Facebook. OpenAI said four of the 10 malicious accounts were likely of Chinese origin.

“What we’re seeing from China is a growing range of covert operations using a growing range of tactics,” said Ben Nimmo, an investigator at OpenAI, according to NPR. “ targeted many different countries and topics, even including a strategy game. Some of them combined elements of influence operations, social engineering, surveillance. And they did work across multiple platforms and websites.”

These operations used ChatGPT to generate phishing emails, translate propaganda into Spanish for Latin American outlets and generate performance reviews bragging about their own influence work. One campaign — internally dubbed “Sneer Review” — mass-produced short political comments in multiple languages across multiple platforms.

Another account used ChatGPT to impersonate both sides of American culture war debates, injecting synthetic outrage into sensitive issues with the apparent intent to amplify discord. One of the more elaborate efforts even created fake sock puppet accounts to give their content the appearance of grassroots traction.

Chinese operators also used the chatbot to attack a niche Taiwanese video game called “Reversed Front,” which is rife with anti-CCP themes. OpenAI found the group generated dozens of negative comments in Chinese about the game, even using ChatGPT to author a faux long-form article claiming it had sparked widespread public outrage.