The brand trip is something of a rite of passage for influencers. It signals that a sponsor values their audience enough to fly them somewhere nice, ply them with freebies, and make them feel like insiders. Usually, that means fashion labels or beauty companies hoping to flood social media with sponsored posts. This time, it was OpenAI, and the internet made sure everybody heard about it.
What happened at Summer Club
OpenAI held what it called its “first ever brand trip” over the weekend, tapping a group of influencers for a nature-filled retreat outside New York City. The setting, widely identified as Wildflower Farms, is the kind of Instagram-bait property where cabins cost upwards of $2,000 a night. The trip was branded as “Summer Club,” and influencers posted photos and videos of monogrammed pajamas, branded merch, and serene woodland walks.
The content creators appeared to come mostly from the career and business niche. They post about workplace culture, leadership, and being CEOs. Grace McCarrick, a TikTok creator with 145,000 followers, vlogged from her suite as she ran a bath at night. Nat Lucy, who has 57,000 followers, filmed herself spotting a deer outside her cabin. The posts were supposed to give followers a peek into an aspirational influencer experience, but instead they set off a firestorm.
The backlash arrives
Comments on the influencers’ posts quickly turned hostile. “People will literally sell their soul and their planet down the river for a nice free hotel room,” one commenter wrote under McCarrick’s video. Another person wrote under Lucy’s post: “Wow! Beautiful greenery! They should put a data center there!” The posts themselves received relatively little engagement — McCarrick’s video got just under 300 likes, and Lucy’s video drew fewer than 15,000 views. But reaction videos, which ridiculed or criticized the trip, exploded. A pair of clips alone pulled in more than half a million combined views.
Many commenters raised the environmental costs of the AI boom, including the vast amounts of water and electricity used by data centers. Others pointed to the potential for AI to replace jobs or reshape the workplace in ways that leave everyday people behind. Some also questioned why so many of the influencers on the trip were young women. OpenAI has faced persistent criticisms about the societal harms of AI, and several viewers suspected the company was trying to launder its reputation by associating itself with female creators in the career and lifestyle space. According to data from Pew, the AI usage gap between men and women has largely disappeared, but women still view AI more negatively and are twice as likely to say it will harm them personally.
The influencers respond
McCarrick, who describes herself as a creator focused on “soft skills we need at work,” quickly found herself defending her participation. She made multiple videos responding to critics who accused her of abandoning her morals for a free vacation. On LinkedIn, she wrote that she “genuinely had no idea that people were this anti-AI.” She described the negative response as evidence of “the shocking AI psychosis running rampant online,” using the phrase to mean anger about AI rather than the psychological condition. She added that people in the real world “do not run around like a chicken with their heads cut off, screaming about water usage and wildlife and (curiously) fascism.”
The internet was not convinced. For many, the trip was a perfect symbol of the gap between AI companies and the communities they affect. OpenAI can spend thousands of dollars on a single weekend for a small group of influencers while cities and towns across the country debate whether to host data centers that consume massive amounts of local resources. The optics were made worse by the fact that the trip looked more like a luxury getaway than an educational event. There were no obvious panels, demonstrations, or structured sessions visible in the content posted by attendees — at least not in the early hours of the trip.
A modest but telling retreat
Compared to splashy brand trips in the influencer world, OpenAI’s event was relatively simple. There were no international flights, no private concerts, and no mile-long gift suites. But the venue was still exclusive. Rooms at Wildflower Farms can cost more than $2,000 per night, and the property is the kind of place designed to generate beautiful photos. Some commenters poked fun at the fact that it was a domestic trip rather than a far-flung destination, but the price tag alone made it a significant investment.
Several influencers noted it was the first brand trip they had ever attended. At least one person indicated they were not paid to be there, which is unusual for top-tier creators. That combination — unpaid, first-time attendees, at a luxury retreat owned by one of the most valuable companies in tech — made the event feel less like a legitimate marketing campaign and more like a social experiment. It also raised questions about what OpenAI expected in return. The company said the trip was meant to be educational, and an OpenAI spokesperson, Edie Campbell-Urban, said in an email: “Creators are an important part of our community and how people get information and learn about our products today. 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.”
But if the goal was to generate authentic, educational content about AI, the early results were puzzling. Many of the posts were aspirational lifestyle content focused on swag and scenery, not on ChatGPT or the mission of the company. There was a conspicuous lack of takeaways, tutorials, or summaries from the event. Whether that was because the event was genuinely light on substance or because creators simply chose to post only the most aesthetic parts of their experience is still unclear.
AI companies and the influencer economy
AI companies have used influencer marketing in a number of ways. Some have paid creators outright to make videos about their products. Others have borrowed tactics from consumer brands: Anthropic, OpenAI’s rival, has hosted low-key influencer dinners at trendy restaurants. OpenAI itself has reportedly considered a second trip on the West Coast. These efforts are part of a shift in how AI companies talk to the public.
Early AI messaging leaned heavily on the idea that AI would transform the world and that people should either adapt or be left behind. That approach did not exactly build trust. As backlash has grown, companies like OpenAI and Anthropic have tried to add a more human touch. They have opened pop-up coffee shops, released limited-edition merchandise, and run ad campaigns that try to turn concerns about AI into inspirational stories. The goal is to lower people’s defenses and make a technology that many find threatening feel approachable and even desirable.
Influencers are useful vessels for this effort because they speak the language of their audiences. A recommendation from a trusted creator can feel more authentic than a corporate ad. But the same intimacy cuts both ways. When an influencer is seen as selling out, the backlash can be fierce — and it often lands on the creator rather than the company. That is exactly what happened here. OpenAI can walk away from the Summer Club controversy with a corporate statement about valuing debate. The creators, meanwhile, are left to answer for a company’s environmental record and labor concerns in their comments sections, on LinkedIn, and in endless reaction videos.
What the trip reveals
The OpenAI brand trip may not have been the marketing failure it initially appears to be. For one thing, it generated enormous awareness. Millions of people who would never otherwise see an influencer’s cabin tour engaged with the drama. The phrase “OpenAI brand trip” became shorthand for the AI industry’s cultural blind spots. For another, the trip tested a new audience without committing too much. If the event had gone smoothly, OpenAI would have gained goodwill among career-focused creators and their followers. If it backfired, the company could simply note that it was just one small weekend and that healthy debate is welcome.
But the incident also revealed something uncomfortable for the AI industry: its reputation has become so polarized that even a relatively benign influencer event can turn into a scandal. The energy and water needed for AI data centers are deeply tied to the technology’s growth, and people are paying attention. The idea of AI executives mingling with influencers in a luxury nature retreat while communities fight over data center resources is, to many, a grotesque contrast. The audience’s anger was not really about free pajamas or monogrammed bathrobes. It was about who gets to enjoy the spoils of AI and who is left to deal with the consequences.
For influencers, the episode is a warning about the risks of partnering with tech companies. A brand trip that looks like a win — free travel, exclusive access, and new content — can turn into a reputational liability in under 48 hours. The comments sections of the Summer Club posts are now filled with criticism that will stay attached to those creators long after the trip ends. Some of them will likely rebuild their audiences by playing up their resilience against online outrage. Others may find that the association with OpenAI is difficult to shake.
OpenAI, for its part, is not likely to stop experimenting with creator marketing. The company has a massive budget, a product used by millions, and a need to improve its image in an environment of growing regulation and public skepticism. Influencer trips are a cheap way to reach people who have tuned out traditional media. But as this weekend showed, they are also a powerful magnet for the very criticism the AI industry is trying to avoid. The AI industry wants the soft power and cultural relevance that influencers can provide, and it has realized that the price of reaching their audiences can be surprisingly low. Yet the cost of a weekend in the Catskills may be nothing compared to the cost of being seen as trying to buy trust. You get what you pay for.
Source: The Verge News