Operation “High Five”: Philippines political comments

This case study was originally published in OpenAI’s June 2025⁠(opens in a new window) report.

Actor

We banned ChatGPT accounts that used our models to generate bulk volumes of short comments in English and Taglish. The comments were posted by accounts on TikTok and Facebook, and focused on politics and current events in the Philippines. This activity was connected to Comm&Sense Inc, a commercial marketing company in the Philippines.

Behavior

The threat actor used ChatGPT to support several stages of a political influence campaign targeting audiences in the Philippines. The stages included content analysis, comment generation, and generating PR materials relating to the campaign.

First, the threat actor used ChatGPT to analyze social media posts about political events in the Philippines, especially those involving President Bongbong Marcos, and to suggest appropriate themes for replies. Second, they asked the model to generate bulk volumes of short comments, typically up to ten words long, in line with each proposed theme.

Third, the threat actor used ChatGPT to generate PR pitches and statistical analyses for its covert influence operation, likely for its presumed current client and any future ones. These pitches stated that the operation had created five TikTok channels aimed at promoting President Marcos’ agenda. Based on the use of these five channels, the operation’s use of emojis in many of its comments, and its generally positive tone, we have named it “High Five.”

Our investigation identified these five TikTok channels, which appear to have begun posting in mid-February 2025. Each channel posted the same videos with different captions. The comments generated by this operation were then posted by dozens of TikTok accounts in reply to those videos.

On Facebook, the comments generated by this operation were posted in reply to news reports by mainstream outlets. There is no indication that the mainstream outlets had any connection to this operation.