Anti-AI influencers are being paid, and so are pro-AI ones

Felix Laurent 5 Nov 2026 4 min read

Big tech

Journalist Taylor Lorenz says she is "once again" being offered a lot of money to promote anti-AI content. On November 4, she posted the pitch, which looks for anti-AI influencers for a paid collab under the hashtag #HellWithAI. The post passed 200,000 views within a day.

AI commentator Chubby, known on X as @kimmonismus, read it as a sign that resistance to AI keeps gaining momentum. The wider record points somewhere else. Money is buying AI opinions from creators on both sides of the debate, and the payers are often hard to see.

What Taylor Lorenz was offered

The email, with the sender's name blacked out, invites Lorenz to a paid collab to "inspire millions" to join the fight. It says AI threatens humanity and the environment and has created "the largest stock market bubble in history."

The sender says they found her through her own video, "Billionaires Are Funding 'Anti AI' Content," from May. The writer calls themself the founder of a tech company. They say they are giving up any chance of venture funding by opposing AI and big tech.

The linked campaign page blames "greedy billionaires and AI companies" for killing humanity. It claims AI has already killed more than 500,000 jobs, with no source in the screenshots. It also lists four "must" rules for supporters:

avoid every AI product and pick alternatives without AI;
refuse AI customer support and ask for a human;
never pay for AI tools;
skip AI-generated content.

The page promises these steps will "bring down these AI CEOs and Billionaires" if half of Americans join. What it does not say is who pays for the collabs.

Who is behind #HellWithAI

Nobody has named the sender so far. Lorenz did not identify them, and replies under her post asked the same question. We found no public filing, press release or registered group under that name.

The web addresses that match the hashtag now host something else. Hellwithai.com and hellwithai.org show a parody page called #HellYeahAI, with jokes about chatbots and hugging GPUs. The page says it has no connection to #HellWithAI or to any AI company.

The pitch itself reads like a small, self-funded effort. Its tone and its claims look nothing like the polished campaigns that safety groups and political nonprofits have run. Those campaigns are the better guide to where AI-opinion money flows.

Anti-AI money is already organized

Paid warnings about AI did not start with this email. In September, physicist and YouTuber Sabine Hossenfelder said a group offered to fund a video about an AI apocalypse. The offer came with a script, down to exact sentences and citations. She turned it down.

Hossenfelder also pointed to the AI safety groups that pay creators. She named ControlAI, an outreach effort tied to the Center for AI Safety, and the Future of Life Institute's "Protect What's Human" campaign.

In October, The Telegraph described the safety side's push into short video in detail. A month-long boot camp near San Francisco, called Plzdontkillus, gave creators free room and board and a stipend. In return, each had to post a video every day or leave. Speakers included Eliezer Yudkowsky and the musician Grimes.

The same report said ControlAI, funded by Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, had bought almost 5 million views by sponsoring creators. One of those videos came from science YouTuber Hank Green. None of this is secret, but viewers rarely see the funder behind a video about extinction risk.

Groups on the industry side buy reach from creators in the same way.

Pro-AI money pays creators too

In May, Lorenz reported for WIRED on Build American AI, a nonprofit tied to the pro-AI super PAC Leading the Future. Marketing firms offered influencers up to $5,000 per TikTok video. The videos promoted American AI and framed Chinese AI as a threat.

Some posts were marked as ads but did not say who paid. Build American AI is a dark-money group, so it does not have to disclose its donors. Leading the Future is backed by tech investors and executives, including OpenAI president Greg Brockman. OpenAI and Palantir told WIRED that the companies themselves had not funded the groups.

AI labs also pay creators directly. Hossenfelder noted that OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Perplexity sponsor videos about AI in daily work. Those deals are usually disclosed as ads, so viewers at least know the brand behind them.

Is the anti-AI movement really gaining momentum

Lorenz's inbox proves that someone thinks anti-AI messages are worth paying for. As evidence of a growing movement, it is thin. A pitch from an unnamed founder with a homemade campaign page is one data point, and a small one.

The larger trend is a paid influence market around AI. Safety groups, super PACs and AI labs all fund creators, and only some of them say so clearly. In the US, the FTC requires creators to disclose paid endorsements, but disclosure often stops at the word "ad."

So the useful question for any AI video is who paid for it. That applies equally to a warning about extinction and to praise for American chatbots.