According to OpenAI, China-based actors are stoking resistance to AI data centers

According to OpenAI, China-based actors are likely behind the use of ChatGPT for “covert influence operations” aimed at fomenting opposition to data centers in the United States.

In a research report published Wednesday, the company behind the world’s most popular AI chatbot said it had suspended a group of accounts believed to be based in China for trying to “manipulate a legitimate debate about American AI.”

OpenAI, whose release of ChatGPT in 2022 sparked a global AI hype, said the accounts were used to generate comments and images on social media that blamed data centers for rising electricity prices in communities across the United States.

According to the San Francisco-based company, the accounts generated, among other things, a comic depicting a cigar-chomping businessman holding bags with dollar signs while a family reacts in shock to their electric bill.

OpenAI said a second group of accounts generated content…