A new report has revealed that a Chinese law enforcement official inadvertently exposed a sprawling international intimidation operation by using ChatGPT as a kind of personal journal. The findings describe an effort aimed at harassing and silencing Chinese dissidents abroad, including impersonating US immigration officials and forging court documents.
The details were outlined in a report by OpenAI, which matched the ChatGPT user’s entries to real-world activity, according to CNN. Investigators said the official used the AI tool to document elements of the covert campaign, while much of the propaganda and harassment content was generated elsewhere and distributed through fake social media accounts.
In one instance described in the logs, operators allegedly posed as US immigration officials to warn a US-based Chinese dissident that their public remarks had violated American law. In another case, the campaign reportedly involved forged documents from a US county court in an attempt to pressure social media platforms into removing a dissident’s account.
OpenAI said the broader operation appeared to involve hundreds of individuals and thousands of fraudulent online accounts across multiple platforms. Ben Nimmo, a principal investigator at OpenAI, characterized the effort as modern transnational repression, describing it as coordinated, industrialized, and designed to overwhelm critics of the Chinese Communist Party.
The ChatGPT entries also included references to an attempt to fabricate the death of a dissident by creating a fake obituary and images of a gravestone. OpenAI investigators later identified false online rumors in 2023 that mirrored the description in the journal. In another example, the user allegedly sought assistance drafting a strategy to discredit Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi by amplifying anger over US tariffs. ChatGPT refused that request, OpenAI said, but related online hashtags later appeared targeting her.
After identifying the activity, OpenAI banned the user. The company said the case illustrates how authoritarian actors may leverage AI tools not only to produce disinformation but also to organize and track influence campaigns.
The report emerges amid escalating US-China competition over artificial intelligence capabilities. Former Pentagon official Michael Horowitz noted that AI rivalry is unfolding not just in cutting-edge research, but in how governments deploy these systems for surveillance and information operations.
