Stop using ChatGPT. Your subscription is funded by an authoritarian regime.

The company OpenAI, which owns ChatGPT, will most likely record a loss 14 billion dollars this year. Its market share is collapsing, and CEO Sam Altman himself admits that his product "messed up". And ten seconds of your time will further accelerate this decline.

QuitGPT is a boycott movement spreading across the United States and elsewhere, trying to persuade people to cancel their ChatGPT subscriptions. Over a million users have already done so. They have the support of Mark Ruffle and Katy Perry, and it is one of the most significant user boycotts of recent times. And I think it’s time for Europe to join in as well.

Last week, the situation worsened when Trump’s administration demanded that companies dealing with artificial intelligence give the Pentagon unlimited access to their technologies – including for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons operations.

It all started as follows: at the beginning of the year, a report appeared that OpenAI president Greg Brockman supported the MAGA Inc movement with a sum of 25 million USD, Trump’s largest so-called Super PAC or expenditure action committee. Through it, Brockman has recently become the most generous supporter of Donald Trump. When WIRED magazine asked for an explanation, Brockman responded that he was trying to support OpenAI’s mission and its “service to humanity” with this contribution.

Let me tell you what this mission looks like in practice. ChatGPT is powered by a tool for spying on people, which uses ICE – the agency that in January in Minneapolis killed two people. The same company that manages your friendly chatbot is thus helping the government decide whom to employ as enforcers of deportation raids.

Corporate death penalty

But it doesn’t end there. OpenAI helped launch a Super PAC with 125 million dollars that would ensure no state could regulate artificial intelligence. It attacks every politician trying to push safety laws. They want the only person writing laws concerning one of the most powerful technologies in the world to be Trump and no one else. Every month, money flows into the company from subscribers around the world, helping it deepen its integration with the repressive infrastructure of Trump’s administration. This is not a conspiracy theory but a business strategy.

Last week, the situation further deteriorated when Trump’s administration demanded that AI companies give the Pentagon unlimited access to their technologies – including for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons. The company Anthropic, which operates Claude, the biggest competitor to ChatGPT, refused.

Revenge came immediately and with full force. President Trump ordered all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic’s technologies. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth stated that the company’s participation in “supply chains” poses a “risk to national security,” which until now mainly concerned Chinese companies like Huawei. He also declared that anyone trading with the American military must not trade with Anthropic. Essentially, this is a corporate death sentence for a company that refused to build killer robots.

And what did OpenAI do? On the same Friday that their competitor dared to take a stand, Sam Altman quietly signed an agreement with the Pentagon, and OpenAI took the place previously held by Anthropic.

To be clear, I have nothing against artificial intelligence. I use these tools almost every day. It’s not about rejecting the technology itself, but rather about refusing to give money to a company that supports an authoritarian system.

This moment is also very interesting for me as a historian. The most effective user boycotts in history have always shared two aspects: they are specifically targeted and they are simple. And QuitGPT fully meets both criteria.

First, a few words about the need to target our efforts. In 1955, the African American population in Montgomery, Alabama, did not try to dismantle the entire segregation apparatus at once. They focused solely on the city bus system, and for 381 days, they walked or drove instead of using it. This not only financially crippled the bus company itself but also led to the abolition of segregated public transportation across the entire American South.

OpenAI is our bus company today. It is also a perfect target because it is very vulnerable. Money is burning faster than any company in corporate history. In just one year, its market share shrank from 69 percent to 45 percent. They are so cash-strapped that they have started using advertising, a strategy that Sam Altman has previously called “the last resort.” Investors are closely watching their subscriber count. Every cancellation hits the company hard.

Leave in ten seconds

And there is one more reason that sets QuitGPT apart from #DeleteFacebook or occasional Amazon boycotts: these efforts both failed because they placed too high demands on people. Leaving Facebook meant losing your social map, family photos, and community groups. For many Americans, quitting Amazon is as difficult as stopping breathing. The difficulties outweighed the principles.

Compared to that, leaving ChatGPT is very simple. It can be done in ten seconds, and alternatives are just as good, if not better. History shows us that #QuitGPT has enormous potential: effective campaigns like the Nestlé boycott of 1977 or the Bud Light boycott of 2023 were successful precisely because they were specifically targeted and simple. They had a clear goal, and people had plenty of good alternatives.

Publisher
✱Alarm

Dvojnice

Naomi Klein

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The most successful boycotts in the world failed not because millions of people overnight became heroes and activists. They succeeded because buying a different brand of coffee or beer is something anyone can do the same afternoon. A small act repeated on a significant scale turns into a political earthquake.

OpenAI’s president bet 25 million dollars that you won’t notice where that money is flowing, and that even if you do, you won’t care enough to switch to someone else within half a minute. Let’s show him how wrong he is.

Go to quitgpt.org. Cancel your subscription. Are you using the free version? Delete the app because your conversations are fueling this machine further. Then try an alternative. And tell at least one friend why you made this decision.

The author is a historian and founder of the organization The School of Moral Ambition.

From the English original Quit ChatGPT. Your subscription is bankrolling authoritarianism translated by Vít Bohal.