OpenAI Influencer Trip Triggers Backlash Over AI Fears
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- OpenAI hosted its "first ever brand trip" called "Summer Club" at what appears to be the Wildflower Farms retreat outside New York City, where influencers received branded merch and monogrammed pajamas in rooms costing upwards of $2,000 per night.
- Grace McCarrick (145,000 TikTok followers) and Nat Lucy (57,000 followers) vlogged from the trip, but their original videos received limited engagement (~300 likes and under 15,000 views respectively), while reaction videos collectively surpassed 500,000 views.
- Commenters on the influencers' posts cited AI data-center environmental effects and job-displacement fears, with some accusing OpenAI of using predominantly young women creators to "launder" the AI industry's reputation.
- Pew Research data cited in the piece shows women are twice as likely as men to say AI will negatively impact them personally — the demographic context behind why the trip's predominantly young women attendees drew particular scrutiny.
- McCarrick pushed back on LinkedIn, writing she "genuinely had no idea people were this anti-AI" and calling the backlash "AI psychosis," saying real people don't "scream about water usage and wildlife and (curiously) fascism."
- OpenAI spokesperson Edie Campbell-Urban said creators are an important part of how people learn about their products, said the event was meant to be educational, and welcomed "healthy debate" about AI.
- The trip produced surprisingly little content about ChatGPT capabilities — mostly aspirational lifestyle posts — and one influencer said they were not paid; there are "rumblings" of a second OpenAI brand trip planned for the West Coast.
Why it matters: The backlash reveals that AI companies' shift toward lifestyle-influencer marketing surfaces the industry's deepest public anxieties: data-center environmental costs and workplace automation. The original influencer content received minimal traction (McCarrick's ~300 likes), while reaction videos drew over 500,000 combined views — meaning the controversy reached far more people than OpenAI's intended messaging ever did.
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