OpenAI, the most influential artificial intelligence company in the technology industry, revealed last week how it will regulate the use of its AI models ChatGPT and DALL-E during the 2024 United States presidential elections. One of these new policies is that OpenAI would not allow its tools and services to be used to create imitations of real electoral candidates.
Just a few days later, OpenAI applied this policy, banning access to a developer who used ChatGPT to create a chatbot that imitated Dean Phillips, a member of the United States House of Representatives. Phillips is a candidate for the presidency of the United States for the Democratic Party and one of the main competitors of current President Joe Biden.
The chatbot, known as “Dean.Bot”, is a creation of the company Delphi, which received funding from We Deserve Better, a Super PAC (fundraising organization for electoral candidates) created to support Phillips’ campaign, as reported by The Washington Post.
Although the bot had disclaimer notices stating that it was an AI tool, it violated OpenAI’s rules against creating such chatbots.
On Thursday, the Super PAC We Deserve Better requested Delphi to stop using ChatGPT for “Dean.Bot” and instead use open-source AI models for the chatbot. However, last Friday, Delphi completely removed the chatbot after ChatGPT suspended the developer.
“Anyone who builds with our tools must follow our usage policies. We recently removed a developer account that knowingly violated our API usage policies, which prohibit political campaigning or impersonating someone without their consent,” said a spokesperson for OpenAI to The Washington Post.
The article also mentions that Matt Krisiloff, one of the co-founders of the Super PAC, previously served as chief of staff to OpenAI’s co-founder and current CEO, Sam Altman. Krisiloff claims that Altman is not involved in the Super PAC, but admitted to having met with Congressman Phillips in the past.
