OpenAI bans suspected China-linked accounts for seeking surveillance proposals

(Reuters) -OpenAI said on Tuesday it has banned several ChatGPT accounts with suspected links to the Chinese government entities after the users asked for proposals to monitor social media conversations.

In its latest public threat report, OpenAI said some individuals had asked its chatbot to outline social media "listening" tools and other monitoring concepts, violating the startup's national security policy.

The San Francisco-based firm's report raises safety concerns over potential misuse of generative AI amid growing competition between the U.S. and China to shape the technology's development and rules.

OpenAI said it also banned several Chinese‑language accounts that used ChatGPT to assist phishing and malware campaigns and asked the model to research additional automation that could be achieved through China's DeepSeek.

The Chinese embassy in the U.S. did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

It also banned accounts tied to suspected Russian‑speaking criminal groups that used the chatbot to help develop certain malware, OpenAI said.

The Microsoft-backed startup has disrupted and reported more than 40 networks since it began public threat reporting in February last year and its models refused overtly malicious prompts, the AI company added.

"We found no evidence of new tactics or that our models provided threat actors with novel offensive capabilities," the company said in the report.

OpenAI, which now has more than 800 million weekly ChatGPT users, became the world's most valuable startup at a $500 billion valuation after completing a secondary share sale last week.

(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Leroy Leo)

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