(TibetanReview.net, Feb27’26) – A Chinese law enforcement official’s use of ChatGPT has accidentally revealed a global intimidation operation that targeted Chinese dissidents living abroad, including by impersonating US immigration officials, reported edition.cnn.com Feb 26, citing a new report from ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.
The official was stated to have used ChatGPT like a diary to document the alleged covert campaign of suppression. In one instance, OpenAI has said, citing the ChatGPT user, Chinese operators allegedly disguised themselves as US immigration officials to warn a US-based Chinese dissident that their public statements had supposedly broken the law. In another case, an effort was made to use forged documents from a US county court to try to get a Chinese dissident’s social media account taken down by OpenAI.
The report said the OpenAI reportoffers one of the most vivid examples yet of how authoritarian regimes can use AI tools to document their censorship efforts. OpenAI has said the influence operation appeared to involve hundreds of Chinese operators and thousands of fake online accounts on various social media platforms.
“This is what Chinese modern transnational repression looks like,” Ben Nimmo, principal investigator at OpenAI, has 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 [Chinese Communist Party] with everything, everywhere, all at once.”
The Chinese operative was stated to have used ChatGPT as a journal to keep track of the covert network, while much of the network’s content was generated by other tools and spread through social media accounts and websites. OpenAI has banned the user after discovering the activity.
OpenAI’s investigators have been able to match descriptions from the ChatGPT user with real-world online activity and impact. The user was stated to have described an effort to fake the death of a Chinese dissident by creating a phony obituary and photos of a gravestone and posting them online. False rumors of the dissident’s death did indeed surfaced online in 2023, a Chinese-language Voice of America article was cited as saying.
In another case, the ChatGPT user was stated to have asked the AI agent to draw up a multi-part plan to denigrate the incoming Japanese prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, in part by fanning online anger about US tariffs on Japanese goods. ChatGPT refused to respond to the prompt, OpenAI has said.
But in late October, as Takaichi took power, hashtags emerged on a popular forum for Japanese graphic artists attacking her and complaining about US tariffs, OpenAI has noted.
The report from OpenAI “clearly demonstrates the way that China is actively employing AI tools to enhance information operations,” Michael Horowitz, a former Pentagon official focused on emerging technologies, has told CNN.
“US-China AI competition is continuing to intensify,” Horowtiz, now a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, has said. “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.”