OpenAI exposes how scammers are exploiting ChatGPT in global fraud schemes
OpenAI is revealing how scammers are attempting to use ChatGPT for a variety of purposes, ranging from modern romance scams to attempts to defame the Prime Minister of Japan.
On Wednesday morning, OpenAI published the latest edition of its intelligence threat report.
Screenshots in the report show a supposed romance scam that OpenAI indicated likely started in Cambodia. The report noted that users asked ChatGPT to design a logo for a fake luxury dating service, create images of fake women, and offer tax advice. Interestingly, according to OpenAI, when requesting financial advice, the user(s) identified their occupation as "scammer."
OpenAI estimated that the scam, which it claimed targeted Indonesian men interested in luxury lifestyle content, was "likely defrauding hundreds of victims a month."
The company reported that the operation worked by getting users to choose from a selection of fictitious women and relationship types. Once trust was established, an AI chatbot pretending to be a flirtatious receptionist redirected the conversation to Telegram. OpenAI stated that on Telegram, a combination of humans using ChatGPT and API employed "romantic and sexually-explicit language" to direct users to fake dating services and eventually entice them into completing a series of "tasks" or "missions" that "required increasingly large payments via bank transfers or digital payment wallets."
It’s not just fake romance that OpenAI claims to have prevented. The AI company also mentioned that it banned "a cluster of ChatGPT" accounts that impersonated law firms, individual attorneys, and US law enforcement.
OpenAI reported that the scammers asked ChatGPT to generate a fake New York State Bar Association membership card and create social media content to further the scam.
Among the operations OpenAI highlighted, the most audacious may be one attributed to an "individual associated with Chinese law enforcement." According to OpenAI, the person attempted to use ChatGPT to plan "a covert IO," or intelligence operation, targeting Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. This query came after Takaichi publicly criticized human rights issues in Mongolia.
OpenAI stated it gained substantial insight into similar "cyber special operations" used to "suppress dissent and silence critics both online and offline, at home and abroad," partly because the individual asked ChatGPT to "edit and polish periodic status reports."
"This effort appears to be large-scale, resource-intensive and sustained, counting at least hundreds of staff, thousands of fake accounts across numerous platforms, the use of locally deployed AI models, and a playbook of dozens of tactics," OpenAI wrote in its report. "These tactics range from abusive reporting of dissidents’ social media accounts, through mass online posting, to forging documents and impersonating US officials."
Representatives of the Chinese and Japanese embassies did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
ChatGPT refused to assist in the planning of the operation targeting Takaichi, OpenAI noted. Undeterred, the user later asked ChatGPT "to polish a status report on what was clearly the same campaign," implying that the operation continued regardless.
OpenAI reported that the user’s activity included utilizing Chinese AI models, including DeepSeek and Qwen. Based on available data, OpenAI believed it could also map the extent of the influence operations.
"This is what Chinese, modern trans-national repression looks like," Ben Nimmo, the principal investigator on OpenAI’s intelligence and investigations team, told reporters before the 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 with everything, everywhere, all at once."
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