OpenAI takes strong action to prevent the risk of AI interfering in the 2024 US election

American technology company OpenAI recently deleted the account of an artificial intelligence (AI) bot developer impersonating Congressman Dean Phillips, a leading Democratic candidate running for US President this year.

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ChatGPT chatbot icon of OpenAl Company. (Source: AFP)

This is the first concrete action by OpenAI - the developer of the ChatGPT chatbot, to fulfill its commitment to address concerns about AI interfering in elections.

“We recently removed the account of an AI bot developer who intentionally violated our API (application programming interface) usage policy, which prohibits political campaigning or impersonating an individual without consent,” an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement to the Washington Post on January 20.

The AI bot, called Dean.Bot - based on OpenAI's ChatGPT - was created by two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Matt Krisiloff and Jed Somers, who have formed a political action committee called We Deserve Better to rally support for Congressman Dean Phillips ahead of the New Hampshire primary on January 23.

The committee raised $1 million from hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman to back Phillips’s White House bid, which is believed to be Ackman’s largest-ever investment in a presidential candidate.

We Deserve Better contracted with AI startup Delphi to build Dean.Bot. OpenAI deleted Delphi’s account on January 19, citing OpenAI’s rules prohibiting the use of the company’s AI technology in election campaigns. Delphi removed Dean.Bot after the company’s OpenAI account was “deleted.” The We Deserve Better committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The issue of using AI to interfere in elections has become a concern since OpenAI released two products including ChatGPT that can generate human-like text and DALL-E technology that creates “deepfakes” (a technique that uses AI to create fake audio, images and videos ).

OpenAI said on January 15 that it would address concerns that its technology could be misused to interfere in elections, as more than 30% of the world's population is expected to vote in 2024.

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