The brand trip has long been a rite of passage for influencers. It is a signal of legitimacy when a sponsor invites a creator on an all-expenses-paid vacation, often complete with luxury freebies, curated activities, and the implicit promise of glossy, sponsored content. For years, these trips have been the domain of fast-fashion labels and beauty brands, where the goal is to flood social media with perfectly staged photos and stories. But this weekend, it was a major AI company that tried its hand at the format — and the result was a public relations mess that exposed the deep unease many people feel about the artificial intelligence boom.

A scenic getaway with a Silicon Valley guest list

Over the weekend, a group of influencers began posting about what they described as OpenAI's "first ever brand trip." The event appeared to take place at Wildflower Farms, an upstate New York retreat known for its Instagram-worthy cabins, nature trails, and luxury amenities. The trip was branded as "Summer Club," and attendees shared photos and videos of their accommodations, branded merchandise, monogrammed pajamas, and glimpses of the scheduled programming. Most of the content creators appeared to operate in the career and business niches, often posting about workplace culture, leadership, or what it means to be a CEO in the modern economy.

Grace McCarrick, a TikTok creator with 145,000 followers who describes herself as teaching "soft skills we need at work" to teams at companies like Spotify, Amazon, Uber, and DoorDash, vlogged from her suite as she ran a bath at night. Another influencer, Nat Lucy, who has 57,000 followers, filmed herself spotting a deer outside her cabin. On its face, the content was harmless and aspirational — the kind of low-stakes lifestyle posting that has defined influencer culture for years. But soon, the comments started rolling in, and they were far from complimentary.

Backlash from an angry public

"People will literally sell their soul and their planet down the river for a nice free hotel room," one commenter wrote under McCarrick's video. "Wow! Beautiful greenery! They should put a data center there!" read another comment on Lucy's post. These comments tapped into a broader set of grievances that have been building as AI companies expand their infrastructure and reach. Many social media users cited the environmental effects of the AI boom, including the enormous energy and water consumption associated with data centers. Others pointed to the contentious buildout of data centers across the United States, which has led to local protests and concerns about strained power grids and water supplies. Still others raised the specter of job loss, arguing that OpenAI's very mission threatens to automate away the kinds of creative and knowledge work that many influencers and their audiences rely on.

The backlash was notable because the original posts themselves received relatively little engagement. McCarrick's video had just under 300 likes, and Lucy's video had fewer than 15,000 views. By the standards of splashy brand trips, which can generate millions of views and endless reposts, this was a fairly quiet launch. But videos reacting to the trip — criticizing the influencers, dissecting the optics, and questioning the purpose of the event — racked up far more attention. A pair of reaction clips alone drew over half a million combined views, turning a niche influencer event into a mainstream scandal.

Gender, AI, and the optics of influence

One particularly pointed strand of criticism focused on the demographics of the influencers who attended. Many of the content creators appeared to be young women, which led some observers to speculate that OpenAI was deliberately targeting a demographic that has historically been more skeptical of AI. According to Pew Research, while the usage gap between men and women when it comes to AI has nearly disappeared, women still tend to view AI more negatively. Women are also twice as likely as men to say that AI will negatively affect them personally. In the context of the brand trip, some audiences wondered whether the female influencers were essentially being used to "launder" the reputation of an industry under intense scrutiny — to soften the image of a technology that many people see as a threat to their livelihoods and communities.

This interpretation was not lost on the influencers themselves. McCarrick, who has since made multiple response videos addressing the criticism, said she "genuinely had no idea that people were this anti-AI." In a post on LinkedIn, she attributed the negative response to what she called "the shocking AI psychosis running rampant online." By that phrase, she clarified, she did not mean the clinical definition of psychosis — delusions or paranoia brought on by AI use — but rather what she sees as an irrational, exaggerated fear of AI. She argued that people in the real world "do not run around like a chicken with their heads cut off, screaming about water usage and wildlife and (curiously) fascism."

Her defensive response only poured gasoline on the fire. To many critics, dismissing legitimate concerns about environmental impact and labor displacement as "AI psychosis" seemed tone-deaf, especially coming from someone who attends corporate gigs for major tech companies and brands herself as a workplace expert. The exchange highlighted the growing disconnect between the influencer economy, which thrives on brand partnerships and aspirational content, and the broader public's unease with the pace and consequences of AI adoption.

What did the influencers actually learn?

Setting aside the backlash, the most striking thing about the OpenAI trip was how little substantive content emerged from it. Typically, when an influencer goes on a brand trip, the content is inescapable. Every meal, every activity, every luxury bath product is documented and turned into a photo dump or a TikTok series. Influencers are expected to produce a flood of material that ties the brand's message to their personal aesthetic. But in this case, there was a conspicuous lack of content about ChatGPT or any OpenAI product. Instead, the videos and photos from the event were largely aspirational lifestyle content — the cabins, the greenery, the branded pajamas — with almost no mention of what the attendees were actually learning or doing during the event's scheduled programming.

It was unclear what the influencers were being asked to do, what kind of access they received to OpenAI's teams, or whether they were given briefings on the technology, its risks, and its possibilities. One influencer indicated that they had not been paid for their attendance, which is unusual for large brand trips where top talent can command significant fees. Others noted that this was the first brand trip they had ever attended, suggesting that OpenAI may have been deliberately courting creators who were not yet jaded by the influencer-industrial complex. But the result was a muddled campaign that failed to deliver either the polished lifestyle content of a typical brand trip or the kind of educational, product-focused material that a company like OpenAI might be expected to want.

The rooms at Wildflower Farms cost upwards of $2,000 per night, so the trip was hardly cheap. But compared to the elaborate, multi-day, international excursions that fashion and beauty brands sometimes mount, it was relatively modest. Some commenters poked fun at the fact that it was a domestic trip rather than a far-flung getaway, as if OpenAI was dipping a toe into influencer marketing without fully committing to the spectacle.

AI's awkward courtship of creators

OpenAI is not the first AI company to experiment with influencer culture, but it may be the most visible. Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, has hosted low-key influencer dinners at trendy restaurants, bringing together lifestyle creators and AI researchers in a more intimate setting. There are also rumblings of a second OpenAI trip planned for the West Coast, suggesting that the company is not abandoning this strategy despite the weekend's negative press. This fits a broader pattern in which AI companies have tried to soften their public image after years of apocalyptic warnings, corporate reshuffles, and growing public distrust.

For a long time, the messaging from AI companies was blunt: automation is coming, and jobs will change. That framing did not do much to endear the public to the technology. In response, companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have pivoted to more human-centered marketing. They have opened pop-up coffee shops, released stylized merch, and launched ad campaigns designed to take common fears about AI and reframe them as inspirational stories of human potential. Influencer marketing, with its emphasis on relatability and personal connection, fits neatly into that strategy. What better way to reach consumers than through the voices they already follow and trust?

But the backlash to the OpenAI trip suggests that this approach has limits. Influencers are convenient vessels for brands looking to disseminate a message, but they are also easy targets for audiences who view them as out-of-touch or ethically flexible. The reaction to the OpenAI trip was reminiscent of the criticism that followed a Shein brand trip in 2023, when influencers were accused of promoting fast fashion's environmental and labor abuses in exchange for free vacations. In both cases, the influencers bore the brunt of the public's anger, while the brand itself remained a distant, faceless beneficiary.

There is a deeper irony in the OpenAI controversy. The company is betting that influencers can help normalize AI by embedding it into the warm, aspirational aesthetic of lifestyle content. But the public is increasingly sophisticated about the economics of influence. Audiences know that brand trips are not spontaneous; they are carefully orchestrated marketing investments. When that realization collides with the high-stakes anxieties of AI — data centers draining water, jobs being automated, communities being disrupted — the result is not trust but suspicion. As one commenter put it, the only thing OpenAI got for its money was a lesson in what happens when you try to sell a controversial technology with the same playbook used to sell sunglasses and sneakers. The influencers got the hate, the brand got the headlines, and the actual conversation about AI's benefits and risks got lost somewhere between the monogrammed pajamas and the deer sightings.

Source: The Verge News