Time-strapped politician gets AI clone to debate opponent on YouTube

The first-ever AI political debate takes place between US Congressional hopefuls on YouTube – with two ‘real life’ candidates facing off with an AI clone of another. Here’s how it went.

It’s one for the history books, as an online debate between a sitting congressman’s artificial intelligence likeness and his human opponent was held online on Thursday, with few reported glitches.

The race for Virginia’s 8th District House seat is between Democratic incumbent Don Beyer and his challenger 32-year old newcomer Bentley Hensel, an independent.

Beyer who has served in the House of Representative since 2015, is favored to win by a landslide, according to local reports.

Still, Hensel decided to create an AI version of Beyer to help prep for a possible debate with the veteran politician.

In what could become a common practice in future election cycles – Hensel is said to have used his own website to create the AI avatar, feeding it policy materials, including voting records, from the Beyer campaign.

“Given that the incumbent, Congressman Don Beyer (D), has declined the invitation to appear on this forum, an AI system trained on his public statements, press releases, and speeches, will be used to enable the audience to become more familiar with the Representative’s stand on the issues, “ the YouTube description box for the debate read.

Hensel, a DevOps & data engineer, was said to have designed the software to “answer accurately based on source materials and not skew the responses to benefit the challengers,” according to Reuters.

DonBot and rest of the players

While Hensel appeared on camera ‘in the flesh’ alongside fellow independent candidate David Kennedy, Beyer was instead represented by a rudimentary-looking robot icon titled “DonBot.”

The DonBot used its own AI-generated ‘robot’ voice to provide answers to the questions given by moderator D'Ashley Wilson from the Black Alumni Alliance National Association, a co-host of the experimental debate.

True Representation Movement (TMR), a Washington DC non-profit that advocates for election transparency, shared co-hosting duties for the hour-long virtual event, which kicked off at 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, October 17th.

Also appearing on camera to help moderate was TRM representative, author, and generative AI technology expert Dr. Ahmed Bouzid, also the founder and CEO of AI communication tech firm Witlingo.

The live stream – which according to Reuters had about 20 concurrent viewers during its broadcast – was shown on TMR’s official YouTube channel, as well as on Rumble, another free video-sharing platform.

The Republican candidate in the Virginia congressional race, Jerry Torres, also declined to appear, although Wilson in her intro, announced they had tried to create an AI simulation of Torres, but could not gather enough materials in time to make sure the bot would properly represent the politician.

“We are doing this to ensure voters can hear all perspectives even in the absence of one candidate,” Wilson said, further stating that the AI's answers had not been shared with anyone prior to the debate, nor had been vetted by the Beyer campaign.

The first-ever AI debate

The candidates fielded questions around gun control, limiting aid to Israel, and healthcare access, among others, reported Reuters.

When asked why Beyer should be re-elected, the AI chatbot responded, “My answer is simple: I believe that I can make a real difference in the lives of the people of Virginia’s 8th district.”

On the issues, the AI-generated software said ‘it would oppose withholding all aid and weapons shipments to Israel in lieu of establishing a Palestinian state, if that were proposed,’ according to Reuters.

But the news outlet also pointed out that Beyer had actually voted against sending additional aid to Israel back in April, stating that the Jewish nation was wealthy and could borrow funds.

Although DonBot was inaudible during some portions of its answers, the debate apparently went off with barely a glitch.

Debate livestream link —> https://t.co/JY1qmkyPlu

undefined Bentley Hensel (@BFHensel) October 17, 2024

Still, Hensel had faced some earlier challenges attempting to create Beyer’s virtual replica, almost putting a kibosh on the whole plan.

AI-powerhouse OpenAI had found out about Hensel's plan to create the AI for political purposes, and decided to remove Hensel's access to its API, due to a new policy it had enacted in January to help prevent the spread of election disinformation.

The policy is aimed at preventing its flagship ChatGPT model from being used in political campaigns or to create election content.

Earlier this year, The World Economic Forum warned that generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools could help disrupt politics via the spread of false information, with the potential to influence elections on a global scale.

“We want to make sure our technology is not used in a way that could undermine this [election] process,” said OpenAI said at the time.

The ChatGPT-maker explained that until it knew “how effective our tools might be for personalized persuasion, we don't allow people to build applications for political campaigning and lobbying.”

Hensel said he had moved to a different model for the bot prior to the debate, according to Reuters.

A spokesperson for Beyer said the Congressman is set to appear ‘live’ at a community forum in his district on Monday, Reuters noted, adding that he had participated in at least two previous debates with the other candidates.