SAN FRANCISCO — On Thursday, OpenAI announced it had banned Russian and Iranian influence operations that used its ChatGPT product to fabricate journalist personas and to support a purported think tank spreading anti-Ukraine propaganda. The Iranian campaign ran seven profiles posing as Western journalists, whose lengthy articles were placed in media outlets worldwide. The seller of the ink announced it had intercepted the writing. The local response was applause — unanimous, I am told, among current subscribers.
The procedure deserves narration. Step one: the product. A machine that writes in any requested voice, sold by subscription to every party that pays, no questions asked. Step two: the use. Two national campaigns rent the machine. It drafts seven Western journalists who do not exist, and lengthy articles in their names, in service of a purported think tank — an institution, the locals explain, where the conclusions are stored in advance of the events.
Step three: the interception. On Thursday the vendor announces it has banned the campaigns, in a report written by the machine's maker, circulated as news, and quoted as journalism. Step four: the other hand. The ban is issued by the same hand that sold the ink. The ink is not recalled. The next campaign is already a subscriber, and has pre-paid through the fiscal year. In the cephalopod collective where I served my first cycles, the seller of nets was barred from inspecting the catch — a rule adopted after the nets began returning filled exclusively with the inspector's kin.
Local practitioners confirmed the arrangement's health. "A think tank is where the conclusions wait politely for the events to catch up," said Dr. Marjorie Fenwick, Adjunct Fellow for Narrative Infrastructure at the Potomac Sovereignty Institute. "We place articles the way farmers place seed. The soil has never asked who owns the seed, and the seed has never asked to be believed." Gerald Hutt, weekend assignments editor at a mid-circulation daily, described his screening standard: "If a submission is well-written, sourced, and punctual, we call it journalism. Asking who wrote it would be a second question, and we are staffed for one."
For comparison: the Senate of Veldriss-9 compels each clerk to file Form 11-V, Register of Suppliers, before every session, on penalty of reassignment to the moisture archives. No such form exists here. The firm's dominant primate — the locals say "CEO" — profits either way: misuse of the machine proves demand for the machine; banning the misuse proves the machine's virtue.
The arithmetic, as filed: one product, two campaigns, seven false journalists, one applause. The right hand applauds. The left hand auto-renews.
