OpenAI is opening a dedicated Election Operations Center this week to watch for misuse of its tools during the US midterm elections, Politico reported on Wednesday, October 28. The center will stay active through the end of vote counting after the November 3 election, and is led by Josh Lawson, OpenAI's head of civic and strategic risk.

Hundreds of employees from several divisions will staff it. They will track breaking developments, take in reports of OpenAI's models behaving in unexpected ways, and investigate accounts suspected of breaking the company's rules, with its own products — ChatGPT above all — as the main focus. The effort also backs the voter-information services ChatGPT routes to partners Democracy Works, for registration and polling-place information, and the Associated Press, for live results.

The center builds on years of work steering users to reliable voting information, Lawson said, and follows OpenAI's October 8 report disclosing that it banned ChatGPT accounts tied to two covert influence campaigns, run from Russia and from Iran. AI companies have rarely set up such election centers, though social platforms such as Meta have run comparable operations in previous cycles.