The #QuitGPT consumer boycott movement is accelerating. More than 2.5 million people have chosen to delete ChatGPT and switch to another AI model such as Anthropic’s Claude. The Claude app catapulted to #1 in Apple’s App Store. Many of these recent consumer defections have come after Anthropic took a stand against the US government refusing to allow certain uses of their technology while OpenAI quietly did a deal with the US government to allow exactly those same uses. One of the leading voices in the campaign to Quit GPT, historian and author Rutger Bregman, also offered a fascinating historical perspective into why this boycott might actually work:
“Cancelling ChatGPT is a piece of cake. You can do it in 10 seconds, and the alternatives are just as good or even better. History shows why #QuitGPT has so much potential: effective campaigns such as the 1977 Nestlé boycott and the 2023 Bud Light boycott were successful because they were narrow and easy. They had a clear target and people had lots of good alternatives.
The great boycotts of history did not succeed because millions of people suddenly became heroic activists. They succeeded because buying a different brand of coffee, or choosing a different beer, was something anyone could do on a Tuesday afternoon. The small act, repeated at scale, becomes a political earthquake.”
The most interesting part of this story is the emerging central role that trust is playing. OpenAI and Sam Altman are suggesting that their deal with the government does have some controls built in. Others criticize the company for either lying or being naive. Either way, the flood of users quitting ChatGPT seems to come down to one thing: no one trusts Sam Altman.
The head of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, on the other hand seems to be building exactly the opposite reputation. At the end of the day, this may be the most important element for success. As in other industries, the most trusted player usually ends up winning. So far, that looks like Anthropic.