HISPI Project Cerebellum HISPI PROJECT CEREBELLUM

PRC-Linked Accounts Reportedly Used ChatGPT in Covert Campaigns Targeting U.S. AI Policy Debates

June 10, 2026

OpenAI reported that two clusters of ChatGPT accounts likely originating from China used its models to support apparent covert influence operations about U.S. AI and technology policy. The accounts reportedly generated a variety of media and social media comments about AI data centers, electricity costs, tariffs, and U.S. tech competition.

This tactic is a concerning development in the realm of responsible AI and AI governance. As such, it highlights the need for more robust guardrails to prevent similar covert influence operations in the future.

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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

Alleged deployer
people's-republic-of-china-linked-influence-operators, openai-users, information-manipulation-actors-in-china, information-manipulation-actors, chatgpt-users
Alleged developer
synthetic-media-generation-technology-developers, openai, large-language-model-developers, chatbot-developers, synthetic-image-generation-technology-developers
Alleged harmed parties
social-media-users, people-participating-in-u.s.-ai-policy-debates, openai, national-security-and-intelligence-stakeholders, general-public, epistemic-integrity, communities-debating-ai-data-center-development, general-public-of-the-united-states

AI governance case studies

For forensic AI governance failure analysis (TAIMScore™ case studies), browse Human Signal’s Failure Files™.

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1580

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.