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OpenAI says a Chinese law enforcement official used ChatGPT to document an alleged global intimidation campaign targeting dissidents abroad, including efforts to impersonate US officials and forge legal documents.
A Chinese law enforcement official’s use of ChatGPT as a kind of digital diary has inadvertently revealed details of a sprawling influence and intimidation operation targeting Chinese dissidents abroad, according to a new report from OpenAI.
The report says the official documented aspects of a covert campaign that included impersonating US immigration authorities and using forged legal documents in efforts to silence critics of the Chinese government overseas.
Impersonating US officials and forging court documents
According to OpenAI, the ChatGPT user described operations in which Chinese actors allegedly posed as US immigration officials to warn a US-based Chinese dissident that their public statements had violated American law.
In another case, the user detailed an effort to create forged documents from a US county court in an attempt to have a dissident’s social media account removed.
OpenAI said the broader network appeared to involve hundreds of operators and thousands of fake social media accounts across multiple platforms.
“This is what Chinese modern transnational repression looks like,” Ben Nimmo, principal investigator at OpenAI, told reporters ahead of the report’s release. “It’s not just digital. It’s not just about trolling. It’s industrialized. It’s about trying to hit critics of the CCP with everything, everywhere, all at once.”
CNN has requested comment from the Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC.
ChatGPT used as operational journal
OpenAI said the official used ChatGPT to log and organize the activities of the covert network. Much of the content tied to the campaign was generated using other tools and disseminated through social media accounts and websites.
After identifying the activity, OpenAI banned the account.
Investigators were able to match descriptions from the ChatGPT logs to real-world online activity. In one example, the user described fabricating an obituary and gravestone images to fake the death of a Chinese dissident. False rumors of that dissident’s death did surface online in 2023, according to a Chinese-language Voice of America report.
In another instance, the user asked ChatGPT to draft a plan to denigrate incoming Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi by amplifying anger over US tariffs on Japanese goods. ChatGPT declined to comply, OpenAI said. However, similar hashtags attacking Takaichi later appeared on a popular Japanese online forum.
AI rivalry and geopolitical stakes
The findings come amid intensifying competition between the United States and China over artificial intelligence.
At the same time, the Pentagon is reportedly in a standoff with AI firm Anthropic over safeguards built into its model. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has given Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei a deadline to modify protections or risk losing a Defense Department contract.
Michael Horowitz, a former Pentagon official focused on emerging technologies, said the OpenAI report “clearly demonstrates the way that China is actively employing AI tools to enhance information operations.”
“US-China AI competition is continuing to intensify,” said Horowitz, now a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. “This competition is not just taking place at the frontier, but in how China’s government is planning and implementing the day-to-day of their surveillance and information apparatus.”
Source: CNN, OpenAI report, VOAchinese
