An influencer who attended a “luxury eco-retreat” put on by ChatGPT maker OpenAI got far more of a reaction than she bargained for.
Instagram personality and self-styled “public speaker” Grace McCarrick went on an all-expenses-paid-by-OpenAI gathering alongside other content creators at a high-end resort in upstate New York late last month.
Considering how radioactive the subject of AI and the tech companies leading the construction of extremely environmentally damaging data centers has become lately, the backlash to the thinly-veiled attempt to greenwash the tech was unsurprisingly fierce.
“Can’t wait to show this to the millions of folks who are begging to not have data centers in their backyards because of air and noise pollution but your robe looks cozy,” another influencer commented on a video of McCormick filming herself while wearing a lush bathrobe inside a luxurious bathroom.
In a perfect twist of irony, the video was of her running a bath — an unintentional, albeit hilarious, nod to the enormous amount of fresh water being sucked up by AI data centers, putting people living in drought-stricken regions at risk.
“The Effingham residents in my state of Georgia are about to lose a lot of potable water,” another user wrote. “But glad you go to unwind while we all protest this monstrosity.”
“This is absolutely not the flex you think it is,” a different influencer added.
Despite the extremely public backlash to AI and the associated data centers — a growing bipartisan movement that could potentially influence the upcoming midterm elections — McCarrick was somehow caught off-guard by the outpouring of disappointment.
“I genuinely had no idea that people were this anti-AI,” she wrote in a LinkedIn post a week after attending “OpenAI’s first ever brand trip.”
“This steeped in misinformation about it,” she added. “This crazed by the idea of it ruining the planet.”
“If I had, I probably wouldn’t have made a video talking about the trip while running a bath…” McCarrick wrote.
Instead of acknowledging the very real environmental concerns surrounding the tech — “misinformation” would imply that scientists are somehow lying about the sheer amount of emissions data centers account for — the influencer decided to lash out at her haters instead. In her LinkedIn post, she accused them of “wearing clothes made in factories with poor working conditions if not child labor,” being “on a smartphone,” using Amazon, and refusing to recycle.
It’s exactly the kind of tone-deaf rationalizations you’d expect from an influencer who just realized they’d kicked the hornet’s nest and lost much of the public’s support overnight.
Developer advocate Megan Lieu, who also attended the flashy retreat, similarly had to ward off “less than respectful” comments on her LinkedIn post about her experience. She also appears to have disabled all comments on her Instagram posts about the retreat, suggesting she was facing similarly ferocious backlash.
After taking a couple days to digest what just had happened, McCarrick took to LinkedIn once again, thanking friends and family for “defending me.” She also reportedly commiserated with another creator who went on the trip who had gotten a “lot of heat.”
“Like many experiences being a visible person online, I don’t regret my actions prior, I don’t regret going through it, but I’m certainly coming out with some battle scars,” McCarrick wrote.
In other words, influencers, who are actively shilling for OpenAI don’t appear to have regretted attending the all-expenses-paid gig.
Nonetheless, the comments suggest OpenAI’s flashy luxury retreat may have backfired, an unfortunate reality for an industry desperately trying to brush off an increasingly tarnished image.
OpenAI is “very aware” of the public’s opinion of it, outspoken AI critic and journalist Paris Marx told the CBC, motivating it to organize lavish influencer getaways to have them “say good things about their products.”
Yet “more and more people are questioning whether this industry is actually thinking about the kind of social benefit of their technologies or just about what they, at the end of the day, want to get out of it,” Marx added.
Others, who’ve been gleefully watching the influencer meltdown via social media, are desperately hoping that the drama will eventually be turned into a film.
“Such an amazing story,” climate writer Ketan Joshi wrote in a Bluesky post. “I want the documentary of this ASAP please.”
More on the backlash: Protests Against Data Centers Are Now Threatening $130 Billion of Big Tech’s Crucial Investments
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