OpenAI Bans Accounts Appearing to Work on a Surveillance Tool

The AI startup said the accounts were likely linked to China.

Photographer: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg
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OpenAI recently banned several accounts that had been using ChatGPT to write sales pitches and debug code for a suspected social media surveillance tool that likely originated in China, the company said — part of a broader effort by the AI startup to police malicious uses of its powerful AI models.

According to a report the San Francisco startup released on Friday, the accounts were using ChatGPT to advertise and augment what they claimed was an AI assistant capable of collecting real-time data and reports about anti-China protests in the US, UK and other Western countries. That information would then be relayed to Chinese authorities, the report said.