This creator got 'micro-canceled' for promoting Claude. She says AI use is becoming a social taboo.
Anthropic and OpenAI have partnered with influencers for paid promotions.
Their comments sections are filling with a chorus of boos.
Bloomberg/Getty Images Emma Orhun was caught in a hailstorm of negative comments after partnering with Anthropic.
"I was nervous that everything that they said was right," she told BI.
Orhun said she's worried that ongoing backlash will make people less candid about AI use.
Emma Orhun was alone in her apartment when a flood of harsh comments rolled in.
"The first hour was the scariest," she told Business Insider.
"People are saying mean things, and then, I have no one to turn to and be like, 'Are they right? Are they not? Am I crazy?'" Orhun, an Ottawa-based social media influencer and former Shopify design technologist, said she was "micro-canceled" for posting a promotion for Anthropic .
She received another round of backlash after talking about that experience on "The Internet is Dead" podcast.
She's not alone.
Influencers — including those who make money creating promotional content for their followers — have been getting virtual rotten tomatoes flung in their direction when they pair up with AI labs .
In late July, for example, OpenAI hosted a luxury retreat in upstate New York for roughly a dozen social media personalities.
The weekend event included workshops on AI use cases and a beekeeping seminar.
When the influencers posted pictures of their OpenAI-branded jars of honey and videos detailing their weekend learnings, the comment sections swarmed with angry followers calling the event everything from "dystopian" to "morally bankrupt." Orhun didn't attend that event, but her paid promotion with Anthropic received a similar response.
5News aggregated this summary from the outlet’s public feed. The full article, with all the context, is on www.businessinsider.com — the content belongs to Business Insider.