How an OpenAI influencer trip backfired

OpenAI 的网红营销之旅为何适得其反？

The brand trip is a right of passage for influencers. It’s a mark of legitimacy that a sponsor wants to invite them on an all-expenses-paid vacation, often with luxurious freebies and activities. Trips can also spur hard feelings from uninvited influencers, trigger criticism from the public, and project a certain frivolousness.

品牌公关旅行是网红们的“成人礼”。如果赞助商愿意邀请他们参加全额付费的度假，并提供奢华的赠品和活动，这通常被视为一种身份的认可。但这类旅行也可能引发未受邀网红的不满，招致公众的批评，并给人留下某种轻浮的印象。

Usually it is fast fashion companies or beauty brands flying out influencers with the goal of flooding social media with sponsored content. This time, it was a major AI company.

通常，快时尚公司或美妆品牌会邀请网红出行，目的是让赞助内容充斥社交媒体。而这一次，主角是一家大型人工智能公司。

Over the weekend, several influencers began posting about OpenAI’s “first ever brand trip,” which appears to have taken place outside of New York City at a nature-filled retreat (for those curious, it looks to be the Instagram-bait Wildflower Farms). The trip was marketed as “Summer Club,” and influencers posted photos and videos from their cabins, showing off branded merch and monogrammed pajamas and talking vaguely about the scheduled programming.

上周末，几位网红开始发布关于 OpenAI“首次品牌旅行”的内容。这次活动似乎是在纽约市外的一个自然度假村举行（好奇的人可以查一下，看起来像是网红打卡圣地 Wildflower Farms）。这次旅行被冠以“夏日俱乐部”（Summer Club）的名义，网红们在小木屋里发布照片和视频，展示品牌周边和印有名字缩写的睡衣，并含糊其辞地谈论着预定的行程。

Many of the content creators appear to be in the career and business niches, posting about workplace culture or about being CEOs. Grace McCarrick, who has 145,000 followers on TikTok, vlogged from her suite as she ran a bath at night. Another influencer, Nat Lucy (57,000 followers), filmed herself spotting a deer outside of her cabin. All hell broke loose.

许多内容创作者似乎属于职场和商业领域，经常发布关于职场文化或 CEO 身份的内容。在 TikTok 上拥有 14.5 万粉丝的 Grace McCarrick 在套房里拍摄了她晚上放洗澡水的视频。另一位网红 Nat Lucy（5.7 万粉丝）则拍摄了她在小木屋窗外看到鹿的画面。随后，舆论彻底炸开了锅。

“People will literally sell their soul and their planet down the river for a nice free hotel room,” one commenter on TikTok wrote under McCarrick’s video. “Wow! Beautiful greenery! They should put a data center there!” reads a comment on Lucy’s post. Most of the videos got relatively little traction: McCarrick’s video has just under 300 likes, and Lucy’s video has fewer than 15,000 views. It’s measly engagement compared to what other splashy brand trips can command — but videos reacting to the trip have made it something of a scandal (a pair of clips alone has over half a million combined views).

“为了一个免费的酒店房间，人们真的可以出卖灵魂和地球，”一位 TikTok 用户在 McCarrick 的视频下评论道。“哇！好美的绿地！他们应该在那里建个数据中心！”Lucy 的帖子下也有人这样评论。大多数视频的互动量相对较少：McCarrick 的视频点赞数不到 300，Lucy 的视频播放量不到 1.5 万。与其他轰动性的品牌旅行相比，这种互动量微不足道——但针对此次旅行的“反应视频”却引发了一场丑闻（仅其中两个视频片段的累计播放量就超过了 50 万次）。

Many of the comments on the influencers’ videos cite the environmental effects of the AI boom, the contentious buildout of data centers across the US, and the potential for job replacement or job loss as a result of companies integrating AI in the workplace. Some also questioned why so many of the content creators who went on the trip appeared to be young women, as if OpenAI was targeting a specific demographic via media they were more connected to.

网红视频下的许多评论提到了 AI 热潮对环境的影响、美国各地数据中心建设引发的争议，以及企业在职场整合 AI 后可能导致的岗位替代或失业问题。还有人质疑，为什么参加此次旅行的内容创作者中，年轻女性占比似乎很高，仿佛 OpenAI 试图通过她们更易触达的媒体渠道来锁定特定人群。

McCarrick, who describes herself as a creator who talks about “soft skills we need at work,” has since made multiple videos responding to commenters accusing her of essentially abandoning her morals for a fancy trip. On LinkedIn she wrote that she “genuinely had no idea that people were this anti-AI,” and that the negative response to her videos exposed her to “the shocking AI psychosis running rampant online.”

McCarrick 将自己定位为分享“职场软技能”的创作者。事后，她发布了多条视频回应评论者，反驳那些指责她为了奢华旅行而放弃道德底线的言论。她在 LinkedIn 上写道，她“真的不知道人们对 AI 的抵触情绪如此强烈”，并称针对她视频的负面反应让她见识到了“网络上猖獗的 AI 狂热症”。

None of the influencers The Verge reached out to responded to requests for comment. OpenAI said creator marketing is part of how they reach people and that the event was meant to be educational.

《The Verge》联系的网红均未回应置评请求。OpenAI 表示，创作者营销是他们触达用户的方式之一，此次活动旨在提供教育意义。

“Creators are an important part of our community and how people get information and learn about our products today,” OpenAI spokesperson Edie Campbell-Urban said in an email. “We welcome healthy debate as AI becomes more prevalent, and we value creators who choose to engage with us, attend our events, ask tough questions, and learn alongside everyone else.”

OpenAI 发言人 Edie Campbell-Urban 在邮件中表示：“创作者是我们社区的重要组成部分，也是当今人们获取信息和了解我们产品的重要渠道。随着 AI 的普及，我们欢迎健康的辩论，并重视那些选择与我们互动、参加活动、提出尖锐问题并与大家共同学习的创作者。”

Setting aside the backlash to the trip for a moment, a few things stand out. First, all things considered, this appears to be a relatively simple trip. Second, there’s a sense that everyone involved is testing the waters: Multiple influencers noted it was the first brand trip they’d attended. Third and most interestingly, the goals of the trip are muddled: It’s not entirely clear what the influencers were actually doing on the trip, because there is surprisingly little content online from the event.

撇开对这次旅行的强烈抵制不谈，有几点值得注意。首先，综合来看，这似乎是一次相对简单的旅行。其次，参与者似乎都在试水：多位网红提到这是他们参加的第一次品牌旅行。第三，也是最有趣的一点，这次旅行的目标非常模糊：目前还不完全清楚网红们在旅行中到底做了什么，因为网上关于此次活动的产出内容少得惊人。