An eleborate China government secret has been accidentally revealed after a Chinese law enforcement official tried to use ChatGPT to plan a smear campaign against the Japanese PM. OpenAI said they banned the account after they found out China’s secret strategy for covert influence operations and transnational repression. The Chinese official was using ChatGPT to keep track of their covert network and revealed that they were impersonating US immigration officials to scare Chinese nationals based in the US.Chinese operators apparently disguised themselves as US immigration officials to warn a US-based Chinese dissident; they also tried to forge documents from a US country court to get a Chinese dissident’s social media account taken down, the OpenAI report said.

‘It’s not digital, not trolling, but industrialized’

Ben Nimmo, principal investigator at OpenAI, explained that this operation looks like industrialized. “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 Embassy did not react to the report. OpenAI did not just go by what the official told ChatGPT. The investigators matched descriptions from the ChatGPT user with real-world online activity. For example, the official described how they made a false obituary of a Chinese dissident to spread rumors. And something like this actually happened in 2023.

‘Give a multi-part plan to smear incoming Japanese PM’

The Chinese official asked ChatGPT to draw up a multi-prt plan for a smear campaign against then-incoming Japanese prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, in part by fanning online anger about US tariffs on Japanese goods. OpenAI said ChatGPT did not respond to the prompt. But after Takaichi took power, hashtags emerged on a popular forum for Japanese graphic artists attacking her and complaining about US tariffs.