China’s AI surveillance? OpenAI bans accounts using ChatGPT for social media monitoring

ChatGPT maker OpenAI says it has banned several accounts from China that attempted to write sales pitches and debug code for a suspected social media surveillance company. According to a report published by OpenAI, the banned accounts were using ChatGPT to promote and augment an AI assistant capable of collecting real-time data and reports on anti-China protests in the US, UK and other Western countries, which were later passed on to Chinese authorities.

OpenAI says (via Bloomberg) that by publishing these cases it aims to shed light on how “authoritarian regimes may try to leverage US-built AI, democratic AI, against the US and allied countries, as well as their own people.”