The Washington Post reported on Saturday that Microsoft-backed OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, has banned the creator of a bot that imitates Democratic presidential candidate Congressman Dean Phillips. This is the first action the company has taken in response to what it views as a misuse of its artificial intelligence (AI) tools in a political campaign.
An OpenAI representative told Reuters, “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 creators of Dean.Bot, which is powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, are Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Matt Krisiloff and Jed Somers. Prior to Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, they founded the We Deserve Better super PAC in support of Phillips.
Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager, donated $1 million to the PAC, stating in a social media post on platform X that it is “by far the largest investment I have ever made in someone running for office“.
The AI start-up Delphi was engaged by the super PAC to develop the bot. Delphi’s account was suspended by OpenAI late on Friday, citing the company’s policy that forbids using its technology for political campaigns. The report also stated that Delphi removed Dean.Bot following the account suspension.
A request for comment from We Deserve Better was not immediately answered, and Delphi was not immediately reachable.
According to the Post, Dean.Bot, which included a warning stating that it was an AI tool, could communicate in real-time with voters via a website. This was an early application of a new technology that experts have warned might seriously affect elections.
