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.
“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.
“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.
Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Vanity Fair
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.”
