Sam Altman in Damage Control Mode as ChatGPT Users Are Mass Cancelling Subscriptions Because OpenAI Is “Training a War Machine”

OpenAI just handed one of its biggest rivals a massive PR victory, in a blunder that even CEO Sam Altman admitted had optics that “don’t look good.”

On Friday, Altman announced that OpenAI had reached a new agreement with the Department of Defense over how its AI systems would be deployed across the military, an act that many saw as the company crossing the picket line. That’s because Anthropic, a company founded by former OpenAI employees, had refused to give in to the Pentagon’s demands that it give the military unrestricted use of its Claude AI, even as CEO Dario Amodei insisted that Anthropic’s AI not be used for autonomous weaponry or the mass surveillance of US citizens.

It was a move that could come at great cost for Anthropic. The Pentagon had vowed to ice the company out of contracts with the federal government by declaring it a “supply chain risk,” and even threatened to seize its tech.

But at least in the short term, it’s OpenAI that’s facing more blowback for its decision. Online, scores of users — ranging from your typical AI bro to, we kid you not, Katy Perry — are saying they’re ditching ChatGPT in favor of Claude because of Altman’s deal with the Pentagon. Indeed, Claude surged to the top of the App Store over the weekend, and as of Monday, still claims the number one spot above ChatGPT, which is currently in second place.

A recent thread in the r/ChatGPT subreddit calling on users to to quit the AI chatbot quickly became one of the forum’s most highly-upvoted posts of all time.

“You’re now training a war machine,” the thread reads. “Let’s see proof of cancellation.”

The fierce backlash is despite Altman claiming that the DoD agreement included the same restrictions that Anthropic had been seeking. But in the eyes of many of its users and critics alike, the fact that OpenAI had reached an agreement at all while Anthropic refused to bend the knee was a sign of its capitulation to a deeply unpopular administration. The ethics of a company that was founded on supposedly beneficent principles now allowing its AI systems to be deployed across the US military couldn’t have faced a more immediate test when just hours after Altman announced the agreement on Friday, the US and Israel launched a series of deadly strikes in Iran that killed its leader Ruhollah Khomeini and hundreds of civilians. (Reports suggest that the DoD used Claude to select targets in Iran, meaning even Anthropic’s principled stand may be yet more theater from the AI industry.)

Altman, meanwhile, has been in damage control. Following the deal’s announcement, he hosted a rare AMA on X where he fielded questions about OpenAI’s work with the “DoW” — referring to the “Department of War,” the Trump administration’s preferred moniker for the DoD — and respondents didn’t hold back.

“How did you go from ‘a tool for the betterment of the human race’ to ‘let’s work with the department of WAR’?” asked one user. Another mocked Altman by asking if he was happy that Claude overtook ChatGPT on the App Store. “No,” Altman conceded.

One of the most pressing questions concerned what OpenAI would do if the DoD issued orders that violated the constitution, or sought to carry out mass domestic surveillance. Altman’s line was that OpenAI would refuse any such orders, even if it meant imprisonment. (“Please come visit me in jail if necessary,” he quipped.)

But he also exhibited a blind faith that this would never be an issue by, more or less, extolling the virtues of the armed forces. Altman asserted that the “people in our military are far more committed to the constitution than an average person off the streets,” and uncritically cited a statement from a DoD official who vowed that it would never infringe on American’s civil liberties or engage in “unlawful” surveillance.

Such pinky-promises from Trump administration figures were apparently enough to convince Altman that everything the military did or has ever done is entirely above board, to overlook the fact that the administration has leaned on cutting edge surveillance tech to carry out mass deportations, and to memory-hole the name “Edward Snowden.”

“I would also be terrified of a world where our government decided mass domestic surveillance was ok,” Altman wrote at one point. “I don’t know how I’d come to work every day if that were the state of the country/Constitution.”

OpenAI users rightfully viewed Altman’s feigned ignorance as an insult to their intelligence. “You cannot post the statements by an Administration that is known to lie and expect people to have trust or confidence in [you or your company],” one fumed.

At the end of the day, even Altman couldn’t deny how the PR disaster he had created for himself. The DoD deal, he admitted, “was definitely rushed, and the optics don’t look good.”

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