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OpenAI said it banned accounts apparently linked to entities in the People’s Republic of China after they used ChatGPT to support surveillance-related planning, targeted profiling, and research on critics and other individuals. According to the company, the activity focused on drafting plans, proposals, and promotional materials for social media monitoring tools rather than having the model directly perform monitoring or build operational systems.
The reported use cases included a proposal for a "High-Risk Uyghur-Related Inflow Warning Model" that would compare transport booking data with police records, efforts to identify funding sources for an X account critical of the Chinese government, attempts to identify organizers of a petition in Mongolia, and requests to summarize politically sensitive news relevant to China. OpenAI said it could not independently verify whether the proposed tools were ultimately deployed by Chinese government entities, but described the activity as part of broader malicious use of AI tied to surveillance and influence operations.
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On October 1, 2025, OpenAI published a case study describing PRC-linked abuse involving surveillance and influence-related activity. The company said the observed behavior appeared consistent with individual users leveraging ChatGPT for planning and research rather than large-scale institutional deployment.
OpenAI reported that it banned accounts apparently linked to PRC government entities for using ChatGPT to support surveillance-related planning, targeted profiling, and research on critics and other individuals. The activity included proposals for a social media monitoring tool, a Uyghur-related travel warning model, and targeted open-source research requests.
OpenAI disclosed that it banned a cluster of ChatGPT accounts, dubbed Operation “Peer Review,” that likely originated in China and used the service to support surveillance-related research, profiling, and development of the Qianyue social media monitoring tool. OpenAI said the activity involved manual prompting for political research, document translation and analysis, comment drafting, and code debugging, but it found no evidence its own models powered the surveillance tool itself.
OpenAI said it had previously reported in February on a case involving the design of an AI-powered social media listening tool allegedly intended for Chinese security forces.
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OpenAI has taken action to ban several ChatGPT accounts believed to be linked to Chinese government entities and cybercriminal groups attempting to leverage AI for surveillance and cyber operations. According to OpenAI’s latest threat report, these accounts were primarily using ChatGPT to enhance existing cyber capabilities rather than inventing entirely new attack methods. The banned users often requested assistance from ChatGPT in designing tools for large-scale monitoring and analysis, such as social media listening platforms capable of scanning major networks like X, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok, and YouTube for content deemed extremist or politically sensitive. In one notable case, a user suspected of operating from China via VPN asked ChatGPT to help create promotional materials and project plans for a surveillance tool, allegedly for a government client, though OpenAI could not confirm if the tool was ultimately deployed. Other banned accounts sought to use ChatGPT to identify funding sources for social media accounts critical of the Chinese government and to uncover petition organizers in Mongolia, but the AI only provided publicly available information and did not reveal sensitive data. OpenAI’s report highlights that these activities are indicative of how authoritarian regimes might seek to abuse AI capabilities in the future, even if current attempts remain limited in scope. The threat report also notes that most adversarial AI use cases involve automating and scaling traditional hacking tasks, such as malware development, command-and-control infrastructure, spearphishing, and reconnaissance, rather than creating novel attack vectors. The accounts in question displayed characteristics consistent with Chinese intelligence operations, including the use of the Chinese language and targeting sectors like Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, U.S. academia, think tanks, and organizations critical of the Chinese government. Technical overlaps were observed between these accounts and a known Chinese cyber espionage group, suggesting a coordinated effort. OpenAI’s intelligence team, including principal investigator Ben Nimmo, emphasized that while the AI models were not directly used to conduct surveillance, the planning and documentation support provided by ChatGPT could facilitate future operations. The company’s proactive monitoring and banning of these accounts underscore the growing concern over the misuse of generative AI by state actors and cybercriminals. OpenAI’s findings provide valuable insights into the evolving tactics of threat actors who are increasingly integrating AI into their existing cyber workflows. The report also raises questions about the potential for more sophisticated abuses of AI as the technology matures. OpenAI’s actions reflect a broader industry trend of AI providers taking steps to detect and disrupt malicious use of their platforms. The company continues to monitor for similar activities and collaborates with other stakeholders to mitigate risks associated with adversarial AI. These developments highlight the importance of vigilance and cross-sector cooperation in addressing the security challenges posed by generative AI technologies.
Jun 29, 2026
OpenAI reported that a **ChatGPT account linked to Chinese law enforcement** used the model to review and edit internal write-ups on so-called **“cyber special operations,”** which OpenAI assessed as activity consistent with **covert influence operations and transnational repression** aimed at harassing and silencing critics of the Chinese Communist Party. The uploaded materials described a sustained, resource-intensive campaign involving **hundreds of staff**, **thousands of fake social-media accounts**, mass content generation, and tactics such as flooding platforms with fraudulent complaints against dissidents, forging documents, and in some cases **impersonating U.S. officials** to intimidate targets. OpenAI said the activity was tied to a single account, which it **banned**. OpenAI also described an attempted **smear/propaganda operation targeting Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi**, where the actor prompted ChatGPT for plans to amplify negative commentary on social media and to draft messages from fake accounts to pressure other Japanese politicians; when the model refused, the actor’s later prompts suggested the operation proceeded using other AI models. Separately, OpenAI attributed another cluster of accounts likely originating from mainland China that used ChatGPT to seek information on **U.S. persons, online forums, and federal building locations**, and to draft emails posing as a Hong Kong-based firm (*Nimbus Hub Consulting*), with OpenAI noting indicators such as VPN usage and prompts written in **Simplified Chinese**.
Jun 29, 2026
OpenAI said two likely China-linked influence operations used ChatGPT to generate images and social media posts aimed at divisive U.S. debates over AI infrastructure and trade policy. The clusters, dubbed **"Data Center Bandwagon"** and **"Tech and Tariffs,"** produced English- and Chinese-language content that portrayed data center expansion as driving up electricity prices, straining power grids, consuming water, and harming the environment, while separate posts framed U.S. tariffs as a covert tool for controlling the global technology landscape. OpenAI said the operators likely originated in China, used VPNs, prompted ChatGPT in simplified Chinese, and posed as Americans on platforms including **X** and **YouTube**. OpenAI assessed that neither campaign achieved meaningful engagement and found no evidence the operators created the underlying controversies or materially shaped them, but the activity showed how AI tools can be used to amplify existing domestic disputes. The company also found the actors used ChatGPT for operational support, including editing work reports containing OPSEC details and discussing ways to exploit Facebook’s ecosystem and evade Meta’s coordinated inauthentic behavior detection. A separate analysis said the activity appeared tied to a private Chinese technology contractor serving provincial government clients, reflecting a deniable, scalable model aligned with broader Chinese propaganda patterns and strategic competition over U.S. AI and data center buildout.
Jul 31, 2026