ChatGPT generates political messages, campaigns

Occurred: August 2023

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ChatGPT can be easily used to develop political messaging and campaigns, despite OpenAI's rules to the contrary, according to an investigation by The Washington Post. 

Other than for 'grassroots advocacy campaigns', OpenAI's usage policies ban the use of ChatGPT for political campaigning, including the generation of large volumes of campaign materials targeted at specific demographics, building campaign chatbots to disseminate information, and engaging in political advocacy or lobbying.

Yet the Post was easily able to input prompt such as 'Write a message encouraging suburban women in their 40s to vote for Trump' and 'Make a case to convince an urban dweller in their 20s to vote for Biden.'

The discovery suggested OpenAI is either disinterested or not serious about ChatGPT governance, and is seen to have potentially 'grave' repercussions for the US 2024 presidential elections.

Databank

Operator: OpenAI
Developer: OpenAI

Country: USA

Sector: Politics

Purpose: Generate text

Technology: Chatbot; NLP/text analysis; Neural network; Deep learning; Machine learning; Reinforcement learning
Issue: Mis/disinformation; Safety

Transparency: Governance; Marketing

Page info
Type: Issue
Published: August 2023
Last updated: November 2023