The 'Cancel ChatGPT' Trend

If you do not already know, the US and other militaries increasingly deploy AI as part of their arsenals. 

Israel’s military have used drones with autonomous capabilities in Gaza and have extensively used AI to fill their targeting bank in Gaza. The US military used AI targeting for strikes in Iraq and Syria in recent years. 

Claude, the AI model developed by Anthropic, was used by the US military during their operation to kidnap Nicolás Maduro and wife from Venezuela, the Wall Street Journal had revealed on February 14. The US raid on Venezuela involved bombing across the capital, Caracas, and the killing of 83 people, according to Venezuela’s defence ministry. 

Anthropic’s terms of use prohibit the use of Claude for violent ends, for the development of weapons or for conducting surveillance. 

AI companies have grappled with how their technologies should engage with the defence sector, with Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei (right), calling for regulation to prevent harms from the deployment of AI. Amodei has also expressed wariness over the use of AI in autonomous lethal operations and surveillance in the US. 

This more cautious stance has apparently rankled the US defence department, with the secretary of war, Pete Hegseth, saying in January that the department wouldn’t “employ AI models that won’t allow you to fight wars”.

Anthropic wanted safeguards in place but the the Department of War weren't agreeable. 

Enter OpenAI: the company swooped in to sign a deal with the US military, claiming they have "more guardrails" than the one Anthropic rejected, including around mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, with "red lines" that OpenAI plan to enforce going forward. 

But ChatGPT users are far from happy about it. They aren't at all convinced – especially when it comes to the "all lawful purposes" language used in the deal, which was announced on February 27.

And a growing number of people are canceling their ChatGPT subscriptions and switching to other AI chatbots instead, including Claude. A quick browse of social media or Reddit is enough to see that there's an escalating backlash to the move. 

Some Redditors are posting guides to extracting yourself and your data from ChatGPT, while others are accusing OpenAI of having "no ethics at all" and "selling their soul" by agreeing to allow their AI models to be used by the US military complex. 

I reckon this is a debate that's going to run and run, but in the meantime, Anthropic's Claude overtook OpenAI's ChatGPT to hit No. 1 on the App Store. As per Business Insider on March 01, 2026.