OpenAI more than doubles sponsored ChatGPT posts in push to soften AI's image

OpenAI is pouring money into influencer marketing as it tries to reposition ChatGPT as a friendly everyday assistant rather than a threat, according to reporting by Business Insider.

The scale of the effort is growing fast. Sponsored Instagram posts promoting ChatGPT rose from 61 in June to 122 in July and then to 141 in August, according to data from the influencer marketing platform HypeAuditor that Business Insider cited. The outlet reviewed dozens of the sponsored posts and spoke with six creators and talent managers who have worked with the company.

Pitching ChatGPT as a life tool

OpenAI is not asking influencers to address fears about existential AI risk. Instead, briefs seen by Business Insider push a softer line: that ChatGPT is cool, and that it can support work that benefits the world.

The targeting is deliberately broad, reaching parenting and fitness creators as well as tech-focused ones. HypeAuditor's analysis of hundreds of sponsored Instagram posts found recurring themes of coding, productivity, career development, health, travel, education, content creation, shopping and home projects.

One back-to-school campaign featured Martha Dove, a mother of five, showing how ChatGPT helps her children with math homework, with the ad highlighting features such as a study mode and teen safety tools. In early September, The Shade Room, a meme account with more than 28 million Instagram followers, ran a sponsored post built around a word search puzzle generated by ChatGPT — a sign the strategy stretches well beyond productivity demos.

Talent manager Amanda Acevedo of G&B Digital Management told Business Insider that AI brands share one core message when briefing creators: AI is an assistant, not a replacement.

Retention, not just conversion

Creator Natasha Badger, who partnered with OpenAI in July to promote its ChatGPT Work tools, told Business Insider that most of her audience already uses ChatGPT. In her view, the goal is not winning new users but making ChatGPT the default chatbot people keep returning to.

Business Insider frames OpenAI's influencer strategy as having two parts: persuading businesses to pay for enterprise tools, and keeping millions of consumers coming back to ChatGPT as the company builds out its advertising business.

Creators absorb the backlash

Working with AI companies carries reputational risk for influencers. A small group of creators who attended an OpenAI brand trip in August found their comment sections flooded with accusations that their content was morally bankrupt or dystopian, according to Business Insider.

That hostility has not slowed the wider rush. Acevedo said the five creator inboxes she manages each receive around 15 emails per day from AI companies or AI-related features. Badger described an intense battle among AI companies over market share and creator partnerships. OpenAI is not alone here: Business Insider reports that Anthropic and Higgsfield AI are also pitching influencers.

A professionalized operation

OpenAI is staffing up for this work. A review of employee LinkedIn profiles by Business Insider found it has hired people from Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat — most notably Charles Porch, Instagram's longtime head of partnerships, who joined in February. The company has also engaged the influencer marketing agency Viral Nation, whose past clients include Meta, Google and Uber, to handle elements of its creator campaigns.

An OpenAI spokesperson told Business Insider that creators are how people get information about and learn to use its products. People who have worked on the campaigns said the company gives creators latitude on content rather than dictating a script, as long as the output ties ChatGPT to a relatable, everyday use case.

Acevedo sees the sponsored posts as an attempt to ease the friction between the AI industry and the creator economy — a signal, in her words, that the two sides are not against each other.

Why it matters

The campaign signals a shift in how AI companies manage public trust. With safety concerns dominating the conversation around AI, OpenAI is effectively outsourcing reputation-building to creators whose audiences already trust them, paying for reach and warmth that traditional advertising struggles to deliver. The posting numbers suggest the distribution strategy is scaling, but the hostile reactions some creators face show the message has not landed everywhere. If sponsored content becomes a primary way people learn what AI products do and how to use them, then creator credibility and ad disclosure become part of the AI trust question — and with rivals flooding the same inboxes, the fight for friendly voices is only intensifying.