OpenAI, 인플루언서 대군단으로 이미지 세탁 나선다

A series on marketing leadership and innovation. Taboola is buying a rival adtech company to gain a bigger foothold with lucrative finance clients Google has to make big changes to its advertising empire. Here's what a judge ruled — minus the jargon. Why it feels like every brand is having a scandal right now We got a new clue about Xbox's ad ambitions OpenAI is enlisting an influencer army to make it look 'good for the world' By Dan Whateley You're currently following this author! Click to unsubscribe from email alerts. and Sydney Bradley You're currently following this author! Click to unsubscribe from email alerts. 2026-09-23T11:30:01.283Z Read in app Copy link Email Facebook WhatsApp X LinkedIn Bluesky Threads lighning bolt icon An icon in the shape of a lightning bolt. Impact Link Save Saved Listen to this story AI's reputation is in hot water. Can influencers save it? OpenAI has been ramping up its creator marketing efforts as AI safety concerns take center stage. The company isn't asking influencers to assuage fears that a rogue AI could destroy humanity . Instead, it's prompting them to showcase why ChatGPT is "cool , " per one influencer talent manager , or how it can support work that's "good for the world," according to one campaign pitch viewed by Business Insider. OpenAI doubled the number of sponsored Instagram posts promoting ChatGPT from 61 in June to 122 in July, and then increased it further to 141 in August, according to data compiled by the influencer marketing platform HypeAuditor. Business Insider reviewed dozens of sponsored posts for OpenAI's ChatGPT product, and spoke with six managers and creators who had worked with the company. The company is casting a wide net, reaching out to parenting and fitness influencers as well as tech-savvy creators to broaden its user base and grow its advertising business. The message: ChatGPT can help you parent, run a business, create content, plan a workout, and be a good person. OpenAI's influencer strategy can be split into two buckets: getting businesses to pay for enterprise tools and keeping millions of consumers coming back to ChatGPT. Working with OpenAI can be risky for creators. Some influencers who post sponsored content for AI companies are getting dragged by their audiences. A small group of creators who attended an OpenAI brand trip in August were told their content was "morally bankrupt" and "dystopian" in their comments sections. That hasn't stopped companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Higgsfield AI from pitching influencers. Explore BI Games Take a smarter break in your day - and see how far you get. Play now Want more Business Insider in your news feed? Add BI in Google so our reporting is easier to find when you’re searching for what matters. Add to Preferred Sources "In the five inboxes that I manage alone, every single day, I would say at least 15 emails are from an AI company or some AI feature," Amanda Acevedo, a talent manager at G&B Digital Management, told Business Insider. Creator Natasha Badger, who makes content about marketing and tech, said it was a "big war" between AI companies over "who can get the most market share and work with the most influencers." Influencers are painting OpenAI's portrait Creators are a crucial part of OpenAI's public relations. They're "how people get information and learn about our products," an OpenAI spokesperson said. Founders-turned-influencers have been the cream of the crop for OpenAI's #ad strategy. Acevedo said the company is keen on working with creators who can tell a vivid story about how they're strategically using AI to "build an actual business." Badger, for instance, worked with OpenAI in July to promote its ChatGPT Work tools. She's one of many influencer-entrepreneurs the AI company is casting in short-form video ads across Instagram and TikTok. In the sponsored post, Badger walks through how she used ChatGPT to build a presentation. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Natasha Badger (@natashabadger) "Most people following any of us have ChatGPT already," Badger said. "They don't need to convert users. It's more getting people to continue going to ChatGPT as your go-to LLM." OpenAI has been open to hearing influencers' content ideas rather than pushing a narrow script, insiders who've worked on campaigns said. "They want it to be catered to a specific use case that resonates with our lives and day-to-day," Badger said. OpenAI's influencer strategy, however, is growing well beyond B2B marketing. At the start of September, The Shade Room — a meme page with over 28 million Instagram followers — shared a sponsored post with ChatGPT. It wasn't a demo of how AI could streamline your workflow. It was a word search puzzle generated by ChatGPT. One talent manager said OpenAI representatives had expressed interest in working with fitness creators, since health and running questions are such common use cases for ChatGPT. HypeAuditor's analysis of hundreds of Instagram posts promoting ChatGPT found these were the core topics: Coding Productivity Career development Health Travel Education Content creation Shopping Home projects In a recent back-to-school partnership, Martha Dove, a mother of five, shared how she's using ChatGPT to help her kids with their math homework. The ad specifically promotes tools like ChatGPT's "study mode" and teen safety features. Acevedo said there's one key message AI brands across the board are pushing with creators: AI is an assistant, "not a replacement." "I'm still her mom and her teachers are still her teachers — this isn't replacing any of that," Dove emphasized in her video. OpenAI is beefing up its influencer resources As OpenAI hires more influencers, it's building a team of tech veterans who know the inner workings of creator partnerships. OpenAI has hired a handful of talent from platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and Snapchat, according to a review of OpenAI staffers' LinkedIn profiles. Most visibly, in February, OpenAI poached Charles Porch, Instagram's longtime head of partnerships. The AI company has also tapped the influencer marketing agency Viral Nation — which has worked with major tech companies like Meta, Google, and Uber — to handle elements of its creator campaigns. One job of these longtime influencer marketers is to make creators feel like AI isn't the enemy. "There is so much tension between AI and the creator economy," Acevedo said. She sees commissioning sponsored posts as a way for OpenAI to "help bridge that gap — that we're not against each other." Read comments Read next Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know Dan Whateley You're currently following this author! Click to unsubscribe from email alerts. Follow Dan is a correspondent at Business Insider covering TikTok, YouTube, and the business of social media. He writes about how creators earn a living from social apps, the inner workings of companies like TikTok , and the many ways that social media is impacting Hollywood and other industries like e-commerce, sports, music, and news . He previously wrote about marketing and entrepreneurship at Ad Age and Inc. Magazine . He was a McGraw Scholar in business journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY and a graduate of Middlebury College. Disclosure: Dan previously worked at the ad tech company, The Trade Desk, where he was granted stock as part of his compensation. Sydney Bradley You're currently following this author! Click to unsubscribe from email alerts. Follow Sydney Bradley has been covering media and tech for Business Insider since 2020. She breaks news and writes extensively about Instagram and Facebook, as well as new social media startups , dating apps , the creator economy , venture capita