Michelle ThompsonThe company removed the developer’s account, claiming that the ChatGPT bot violated political campaigning laws.
OpenAI has revoked the account of the developer who created an artificial intelligence-powered bot imitating US presidential contender Dean Phillips, claiming it breached company policy.
A ChatGPT-powered bot on the dean.bot website impersonated Phillips, who is challenging Joe Biden for the Democratic Party candidacy.
Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Matt Krisiloff and Jed Somers financed the bot and founded We Deserve Better, a Super Pac that funds and supports political candidates, to promote Phillips.
OpenAI, based in San Francisco, said it had deleted a developer account for violating its political campaigning and impersonation regulations.
“We recently removed a developer account that was knowingly violating our API usage policies which disallow political campaigning, or impersonating an individual without consent,” the business stated in a statement.
The Phillips bot, developed by AI firm Delphi, has been disabled. Delphi has been approached for comment.
According to OpenAI’s usage regulations, developers that use its technology to create unique apps must not engage in “political campaigning or lobbying”. It also forbids “impersonating another individual or organization without consent or legal right,” however it was unclear whether Phillips, a Minnesota lawmaker, had granted his consent to the bot.
A pop-up notification on the dean.bot website refers to the “AI voice bot” as a “fun educational tool, and it’s not perfect.” It goes on to state: “The voice bot sounds like him and is programmed to draw on his ideas, but it’s possible it will say things that are wrong, incorrect, or shouldn’t be said.”
According to the Washington Post, Krisiloff requested that Delphi remove ChatGPT from the bot and instead use freely available open source technologies. Krisiloff, a former OpenAI staffer, has been approached for comment.
We Deserve Better received $1 million in funding from billionaire hedge fund investor Bill Ackman, who described it as “by far the largest investment I have ever made in someone running for office” in a post on X.
Phillips, 55, began his presidential run in October, citing Biden’s age and arguing that a younger generation should be given the opportunity to lead. Phillips, when campaigning in New Hampshire on Saturday, blasted Biden as “unelectable and weak”.
Deepfakes and AI-generated disinformation are feared to disrupt global elections this year, with polls scheduled in the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and India. According to the Observer, 70% of British MPs are concerned that artificial intelligence would spread misinformation and disinformation.
