Key facts

• OpenAI hosted its first brand trip, called "Summer Club," at Wildflower Farms outside New York City.
• Influencers in the career and business niche shared lifestyle content from the retreat, including branded merch and monogrammed pajamas.
• The trip quickly sparked backlash on TikTok and LinkedIn, with commenters citing AI's environmental impact, data-center expansion, and job-loss fears.
• Some audiences questioned the apparent focus on young women creators, referencing Pew data showing women are more likely to view AI negatively.
• OpenAI defended the trip as educational and said creators are an important part of how people learn about its products.
• The event also fueled wider discussion about AI companies using influencer marketing to soften their public image.

The Summer Club weekend

The brand trip has long been a right of passage in influencer culture. In the past, it was usually fast-fashion labels or beauty companies flying creators to glamorous destinations, expecting a flood of sponsored posts in return. Over the past weekend, however, an unexpected player entered that world: OpenAI, one of the most prominent artificial intelligence companies in the world. The company hosted what it described as its first-ever brand trip, and the fallout online was swift.

The event was marketed as "Summer Club," and it appears to have taken place outside New York City at Wildflower Farms, a nature-filled retreat known for its Instagram-friendly cabins and high-end amenities. Several influencers began posting about the experience over the weekend, showing off wooden cabins, peaceful greenery, branded merchandise, and monogrammed pajamas. Many of the creators who attended seem to be in the career and business niches, producing content about workplace culture, entrepreneurship, or being a CEO.

Grace McCarrick, a TikTok creator with 145,000 followers, 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. At first glance, the posts looked like any other aspirational brand trip — soft lighting, luxury details, a carefully curated sense of calm. But the reaction was anything but calm.

A backlash rooted in AI anxieties

Comments quickly filled up under the influencers' videos. "People will literally sell their soul and their planet down the river for a nice free hotel room," one TikTok user wrote under McCarrick's video. "Wow! Beautiful greenery! They should put a data center there!" read a comment on Lucy's post. The original videos did not exactly go viral on their own: McCarrick's video has just under 300 likes, and Lucy's video has fewer than 15,000 views. But reaction videos mocking and criticizing the trip drew far more attention, with a pair of clips alone amassing over half a million combined views.

The criticism reflected much deeper anxieties about the AI industry. Commenters cited the environmental effects of the AI boom, including the huge amounts of energy and water required to run data centers. Others pointed to the contentious buildout of data centers across the United States, which has led to local disputes over land use, electricity grids, and natural resources. Still others raised the possibility of job replacement and job loss as more companies integrate AI into the workplace. For many people, seeing influencers lounge in expensive cabins while AI companies face scrutiny over their broader societal impact felt like a tone-deaf publicity move.

There was also a specific criticism about who OpenAI chose to invite. Many of the content creators who went on the trip appeared to be young women, and some observers wondered whether the company was deliberately targeting a demographic that might be more receptive to AI messaging through trusted creators. According to Pew Research, the usage gap between men and women has largely disappeared, but women tend to view AI more negatively and are twice as likely to say AI will negatively impact them personally. Some audiences saw the trip as an attempt to use female influencers to "launder" the reputation of an industry under scrutiny — a charge that quickly spread through the comments.

Influencers respond

McCarrick, who describes herself as a creator focused on the "soft skills we need at work," and who has worked with teams at companies like Spotify, Amazon, Uber, and DoorDash, responded to the criticism in multiple videos. On LinkedIn, she wrote that she "genuinely had no idea that people were this anti-AI." She said the negative response exposed her to what she called "the shocking AI psychosis running rampant online" — by which she meant anger about AI, not the psychological condition often associated with the phrase. In her post, she suggested that people in real life "do not run around like a chicken with their heads cut off, screaming about water usage and wildlife and (curiously) fascism."

The response drew even more criticism, with many people pointing out that AI's environmental and economic impacts are not delusions. The phrase "AI psychosis" became a flashpoint in the broader debate, with some accusing McCarrick of dismissing legitimate concerns. She was not the only influencer facing backlash, but her defensive tone made her a central figure in the controversy.

Other influencers who attended the trip did not publicly respond to requests for comment. But OpenAI did. The company said creator marketing is part of how it reaches people, and that the event was meant to be educational. "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. We'll continue to value them, just as we do traditional media and other marketing partners."

A closer look at the trip

Setting aside the backlash for a moment, a few details stand out about the event itself. First, all things considered, this appears to have been a relatively simple trip. That is not to say it was not luxurious — the rooms at Wildflower Farms cost upwards of $2,000 a night — but it was nothing compared to the lavish, content-milking trips that some consumer brands organize. Some commenters even poked fun at the fact that it was a domestic trip rather than a far-flung international vacation.

Second, there is a sense that everyone involved was testing the waters. Multiple influencers noted that it was the first brand trip they had ever attended, and one influencer indicated they were not paid for their attendance, which is common for top talent at more traditional brand events. The fact that some creators attended unpaid suggests that OpenAI was perhaps more interested in building relationships than in buying immediate promotional coverage.

Third, and most interestingly, the goals of the trip were muddled. It was not entirely clear what the influencers were actually doing while they were there, because there was surprisingly little content from the event itself. On a typical brand trip, every little luxury, every meal, and every activity is captured in TikToks and photo dumps. Here, the videos and photos were largely aspirational lifestyle content focused on the free swag and the pretty setting. There was no flood of picturesque montages, no clips from expert sessions or Q&As, and no summaries of what a creator learned while spending time with OpenAI. At least not yet.

AI companies and the influencer turn

The trip is part of a broader shift in how AI companies communicate with the public. In the early days of the generative AI boom, the message often centered on capability and disruption. But as public concern has grown, that framing has shifted. "Your jobs will soon be obsolete" has clearly not been the right way to persuade people to trust these companies or support their mission.

Instead, AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have tried to add a human touch. They have experimented with in-person pop-up coffee shops, stylized merchandise drops, and advertising campaigns that acknowledge people's fears about AI and try to turn them into inspirational content. Influencer marketing fits into that strategy because it reaches consumers through voices they already know and trust. Influencers are a convenient vessel, both for brands looking to spread a message and for the inevitable backlash from audiences who give those creators a platform in the first place.

Anthropic has hosted more low-key influencer dinners at trendy locations with lifestyle influencers, and there are rumblings of a second OpenAI trip on the West Coast. The approach is cheaper and more flexible than traditional media campaigns, but it comes with its own risks. When influencers are the messengers, they also become the targets. The AI industry wants the soft power and cultural relevance that influencers wield, and it has realized that the price of reaching their audiences can be surprisingly low — especially when the creators themselves are the ones absorbing the anger. As the Summer Club backlash shows, that strategy can backfire in ways that no amount of monogrammed pajamas can fix.

In the end, the trip offered a lesson not just about AI marketing but about influencer culture more broadly. When a company with the scale and scrutiny of OpenAI invites a group of creators to a nature retreat, the content will be seen through the lens of everything else that company does — from data center energy use to automation fears. The influencers who attended may have been looking for a weekend of content and connection, but the public saw a group of people lending their credibility to an industry under fire. For AI companies trying to build trust, the careful cultivation of friendly faces can be undone in a single comment section. And for creators, the choice to accept a free luxury trip can carry a cost that is not always visible in the feed.

Source: The Verge News