Biden rival banned from using AI bot

Two points of interest stand out from a Washington Post story published yesterday about a chatbot set up to help Dean Phillips cut through as a long-shot Democratic presidential contender. One is that, for the first time, an AI platform has ordered a US political action committee to stop using its technology for fear that voters might be lulled into thinking they’re listening to a person when in fact they’re listening to a bot. “Dean.Bot” is an AI clone of Phillips powered by ChatGPT. It existed briefly in the ether conversing with interested voters before being taken down last week for violating ChatGPT’s terms of service, which ban its use in political campaigns even with disclaimers. The other point of interest is that Phillips has rich and well-connected supporters. The political action committee behind Dean.Bot, We Deserve Better, was set up by Matt Krisiloff, a former chief of staff to OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and part-funded with a $1 million donation from Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund manager and nemesis of former Harvard president Claudine Gay. Phillips’s campaign will almost certainly flame out behind the Biden juggernaut trundling towards a generally dismaying rematch with Trump. But he has begun to make a mark. Look out for the real Phillips in 2028.