OpenAI is trying to make data centers into Chilean sea bass. Good luck.

• Data centers have a bad reputation and were political poison in the midterms.
• OpenAI is aware of that rep, and wants to rebrand “data centers” as “compute campuses.”
• But it’s really hard to change a term once everyone already uses it!

Consider the Patagonia toothfish. You probably know the large deep-water-dwelling fish on menus as “Chilean sea bass,” a much more elegant name. That’s because an enterprising fishmonger realized that the toothfish was cheap and great for cooking, but had a deeply unappetizing name. So he rebranded it for market with a name less “toothy.” It’s now one of the most widely served premium fish options on menus — a rebranding success story.

Can OpenAI pull a Chilean sea bass with the term “data centers?”

That’s what it’s hoping, with a new attempt in their own communications to rebrand data centers as “compute campuses.”

“Compute campuses better describes the scale and role of the infrastructure we’re building for AI,” an OpenAI spokesperson previously told my colleague Truman Dickerson about the name change. “These are long-term investments in computing, energy infrastructure and skilled work.”

Sure!

Look, you don’t need to be a marketing or strategy genius to know that the term “data center” carries a significant negative weight these days. People may feel cautiously optimistic about AI, but no one wants to live next to a data center. Even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said: “I understand emotionally why people don’t want data centers in their backyard in the same way that I don’t really want a nuclear power plant next to my house, even though I know it’s a super safe thing.” (His proposed solution: building them “off in the desert.”)

Politically, data centers go over with voters like a wet fart, as seen in the midterms. Over 30 direct ballot measures against building data centers were proposed, and only one (in a tiny town in North Dakota) passed. Among candidates, being anti-data center proved a winning strategy, especially in states like Texas and Virginia where data center construction is top of mind for voters.

Data centers even became a punchline to memes and tweets about the Democrats routing of Republicans in Tuesday’s election. And you know things are bad when even Elon Musk is accepting that no one wants data centers near where they live.

“Compute campus” has a much nicer ring to it, right? Campus suggests a vibrant, bustling place full of workers and visitors (of course, generally, once a data center is built, it doesn’t need tons of employees working there). Even for corporate “campuses” (as opposed to the college version), there’s usually some appealing aesthetics — a water feature maybe, some nice outdoor seating, appealing architecture.

So can the rebrand work? I’m skeptical.

Firstly, we’ve already seen an attempt at rebranding unpopular terminology around AI: President Trump’s order to use the terms “super intelligence” and “S.I.” instead of artificial intelligence or AI in federal naming and communications. He has a point — “AI” does have a lot of baggage!

Even though certain government writings are using the term, it hasn’t really caught on in the general population. Even the hosts of the technology podcast “All In,” who are in the top echelon of people most likely to actually embrace the term, have largely given up on the new slang.

Secondly, rebrands are hard! Once something has a name that everyone knows, it’s hard to change it. Just think about a sports arena in your area that was renamed after a bank — or a bridge or road renamed — and how often people still call it by its old name.

There have been cases of companies successfully changing or updating their names — Dunkin’ instead of Dunkin’ Donuts or KFC instead of Kentucky Fried Chicken. But those were solidifying an existing nickname in wide use.

In tech, there’s been some notable name rebrands that help when a company expands to have many sub-brands, like Meta and Alphabet, which have more offerings than just Facebook and Google — but I’d argue most normal people rarely use those new names, if they even know them at all.

Renaming a general term instead of a company name is quite different, though. The switch from the negative connotation of data center to neutral “compute campus” is more akin to used cars → pre-owned vehicles, or gambling → gaming, or even dump → landfill.

Maybe it will stick around in some advertising copy or the official building names, but I suspect you’re not going to get normal people to start saying “compute campuses” — let alone welcoming them into their local areas anytime soon. Nice try, though!