OpenAI says a suspected China-linked influence operation tried to sway the debate about US data centers

• OpenAI said it discovered a suspected Chinese-based influence operation to generate ill will toward US data centers.
• The suspected operation was identified because the users relied in part on ChatGPT.
• OpenAI said the suspect campaign didn't gain meaningful traction online.

OpenAI said it banned likely China-based users after they used ChatGPT to try to fuel a suspected influence operation aimed at undermining support for US data centers.

"This looks like a classic example of a foreign influence operation, jumping onto the bandwagon of a genuine pre-existing domestic debate, and trying to manipulate it by using fake accounts, posing as Americans," Ben Nimmo, principal investigator on OpenAI's Intelligence and Investigations team, told reporters on Wednesday ahead of the report's release.

While OpenAI has previously identified other suspected Chinese influence operations, none of them had specifically used the company's AI models to try to sway US opinion on data centers.

"Under the circumstances, it's particularly ironic that they use American AI to do it," Nimmo said.

OpenAI stressed that the suspected data center operation, which it dubbed the "'Data Center Bandwagon' Campaign," was "small scale" and "lasted a short duration, with most of their posts gaining little to no authentic engagement" on X and also Facebook.

"The operation sought to exploit and amplify existing public concerns about energy prices and local impacts of data center
development, but we found no evidence of meaningful breakout beyond its own activity," the company said.

"We didn't see any signs that they succeeded," Nimmo said.

The users behind the campaign, OpenAI wrote in its report, "were likely part of a social media operations team at a private Chinese technology company conducting work for Chinese provincial-level government clients."

Nimmo said the suspected campaign, which occurred between roughly late 2025 and earlier this year, tried to latch onto news coverage about data centers and then tried to use ChatGPT to generate critical posts.

The report's publication adds new light to the debate over the construction of data centers in the US, infrastructure which OpenAI and its competitors say is central to cementing the country's lead in the global AI race and meeting the current and expected future demands of the burgeoning technology.

China has come up before in the debate about US data centers.

In a claim unrelated to OpenAI's report, "Shark Tank" star Kevin O'Leary recently suggested that some opponents to his company's Utah data center critics had ties to the Chinese Communist Party, a claim that two political strategists he called out by name strongly disputed in a mocking online video. Amid wider pushback to the project and requests from Utah lawmakers, O'Leary agreed to cut the size of his proposed data center in half.

OpenAI said the users behind the suspected campaign it detailed on Wednesday "prompted ChatGPT in Simplified Chinese while repeatedly asking for English- and Chinese- language outputs." The AI startup does not allow access to ChatGPT in China, meaning the campaign needed to rely on VPNs to access the AI tools.

Nimmo said the suspected campaign is important because, regardless of its effectiveness, it shows "the intentions of influence operators from China, and the narratives they're testing."

Another campaign targeted Trump's tariffs

OpenAI said a second suspected operation, which it dubbed "'Tech and Tariffs' Campaign," used ChatGPT to "generate short comments and political cartoons criticizing US tech policies and tariffs."

Some of those posts included AI-generated cartoon images of President Donald Trump depicting him as careless, including one showing him sawing a ladder while standing on it.

OpenAI said the timing of the posts was notable because it happened around October 2025, when Trump announced an additional 100% tariff on Chinese goods.

Notably, OpenAI said the users for this suspected campaign asked that China's leader, Xi Jinping, be excluded from any AI-generated cartoon images.

Unlike the first operation, OpenAI was unable to link the suspected tariff and political campaign to a particular entity in China.