ChatGPT Boycotted, 1.5 Million Subscribers Vanish Almost Instantly

OpenAI confirmed it would cooperate with the United States Department of Defense (DoD), prompting significant backlash online. In less than 48 hours, the number of paying subscribers to the AI chatbot ChatGPT fell by 1.5 million. The collaboration between OpenAI and the DoD drew strong criticism from netizens, who argued that OpenAI was supporting military operations, particularly mass surveillance and the use of AI for autonomous weapons. The partnership concerns the use of OpenAI’s AI in ‘secure systems’ or ‘secret networks’ within the Pentagon. Anthropic, a competitor to OpenAI, took a different stance by rejecting the cooperation. Netizens vented their anger, with criticisms culminating in a boycott site for ChatGPT accessible at QuitGPT.org. There, users can see why they should boycott ChatGPT now, including a form requesting name and an optional email address to join the boycott movement. This figure rose by 1 million subscribers from the initial 1.5 million subscribers who had left ChatGPT earlier. According to QuitGPT, the figure derives from data of subscribers who joined the boycott, users who share the boycott page on social media, and third-party app usage data. To date, OpenAI has not officially confirmed the number of users who have stopped using the service, particularly after the startup led by Sam Altman agreed to cooperate with the Pentagon. Regarding QuitGPT, beyond shedding light on the controversy of military cooperation with the DoD, the platform also airs other alleged shortcomings of OpenAI. For example, concerns about the proximity of OpenAI executives to US politics, potential psychological impacts of chatbot use, and plans to add advertising and expand data centres which are deemed to affect the environment. Users also say OpenAI has strayed from its original mission as a non-profit organisation intended to develop AI for the benefit of humanity. Given these perceived harms, QuitGPT suggests users could switch to other AI services such as Confer, Alpine, Lumo, Gemini, and Claude from Anthropic.