OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, has suspended the account of a company that created an artificial intelligence-powered voice bot that impersonated Democratic presidential candidate Dean Phillips. 

It is the first known incident of OpenAI restricting the use of AI in a political campaign.

The pro-Phillips Super PAC We Deserve Better contracted AI startup Delphi to build the bot, which conversed with people in real time at the web address Dean.Bot. 

The super PAC was started by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Matt Krisiloff and Jed Somers. Krisiloff is a former chief of staff to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, according to The Washington Post, which first reported on the Delphi suspension.

“Anyone who builds with our tools must follow our usage policies,” Open AI said in a statement sent to Spectrum News on Monday. “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 Post reported the suspension happened late Friday in response to an earlier article by the newspaper that noted OpenAI’s rules ban the use of artificial intelligence tools in political campaigns.

Delphi said in a post Sunday on X, formerly Twitter, that it mistakenly believed the bot “would be acceptable under the OpenAI terms of service to have a political action committee that supports Dean Phillips create a clone of him using our platform, and we have apologized to both OpenAI and We Deserve Better for our error.”

“We have updated our own terms of service to prohibit any use of our platform by political organizations or individuals,” the company added. 

The bot included a disclaimer saying it was an AI tool and not the real Phillips. 

“Hi! We’ve made an AI voice bot of Congressman Dean Phillips, Democratic candidate for President, that you can speak with,” a message on Dean.Bot reads.

“This is meant to be a fun educational tool, and it's not perfect. The voice bot sounds like him and is programmed to draw on his ideas, but it's possible it will say things that are wrong, incorrect, or shouldn’t be said.”

On Monday, the website said it was experiencing technical difficulties and that “DeanBot is away campaigning right now!”

Phillips is a Minnesota congressman who launched a long-shot bid for president in October. His campaign, he has said, is in response to poll numbers showing tepid support for incumbent President Joe Biden, even among Democratic voters.

We Deserve Better declined to comment to Spectrum News on Monday, and would not comment beyond what Krisiloff had said to The Washington Post.

Krisiloff told The Post on Thursday that, after the newspaper asked about Open AI’s prohibitions, he requested Delphi remove ChatGPT from the bot’s coding and instead rely on open source technologies that could power it. The new bot remained available until late Friday when Delphi disabled it in response to the OpenAI suspension, Krisiloff told The Post.

The Phillips campaign has not responded to an email seeking comment.

Meanwhile, the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office said Monday it is investigating after receiving complaints about robocalls using what sounded like an artificially generated voice resembling Biden’s and encouraging residents not to vote in Tuesday’s primary.

The messages appear to have been “spoofed” to look like they were sent from the treasurer of a political committee promoting a write-in campaign for Biden.