AI gevalt!
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral campaign fought accusations Monday that it used ChatGPT for a typo-riddled housing plan — by blaming an aide’s lazy editing skills.
The hullabaloo erupted after the mayoral hopeful released a 29-page plan over the weekend filled with grammatical gobbledygook, an embarrassing misspelling of “bbjectively” and a footnote that exposed ChatGPT’s helping hand.
But Cuomo campaign spokesman Rich Azzopardi told The Post these were human gaffes, although he admitted ChatGPT was used to research the document.
“We are talking about a grammatically incorrect paragraph on page 28 of a 29 page paper that was missed on proof reading and that has since been remedied,” he said.
“Separately there was a footnote linking to a news article found by chatGPT. Candidates attempting to seize on this to distract from their lack of credentials, vision and electoral support are transparent and sad.”
The typos and syntax issues were because a mumblemouthed campaign staffer used voice dictation to write the plan, the spokesperson claimed.
“It could have been proofread better,” acknowledged the spokesperson.
The apparent AI assistance was first reported by Hell Gate.
Cuomo is the frontrunner in the crowded Democratic primary race to replace the beleaguered Mayor Eric Adams, who has announced he’ll eschew the party’s nomination in favor of an independent run.
The ex-governor’s housing plan released over the weekend highlights his experience as Housing and Urban Development secretary under former President Bill Clinton.
But the plan’s slipshod writing in a section on appointing “Rent Guidelines Board members who will make decisions ‘bbjectively’ (sic)” threatened to overshadow everything else by Monday.
“Victory if landlords — small landlords in particular — are simply unable to maintain their buildings,” is another headscratcher line in the plan.
The section also contained a footnote showing a link was sourced off ChatGPT.
One of Cuomo’s rivals — city Comptroller Brad Lander — accused him of “not even bothering to write his own housing plan.”
“If you want, like, a ChatGPT Mayor, Andrew Cuomo’s your guy,” Lander said.
“There’s valuable uses for AI, (but) somebody running for mayor in this city that is in the midst of a housing emergency crisis should actually do the research and write their housing plan rather than outsourcing it to a chat bot.”
Lander’s predecessor Scott Stringer, who is also running in the primary, jokingly released a graphic for “CuomoGPT,” describing it as “Your favorite evasive, overconfident, non-answering AI chatbot trained on 30 years of press attacks and zero accountability.”
“Andrew Cuomo phoned in housing policy as governor so it’s no surprise he phoned in his housing policy when running for mayor,” Stringer said in a statement.
The housing plan kerfuffle wasn’t the Cuomo campaign’s only recent embarrassing typo gaffe.
His campaign Monday issued a release highlighting the endorsements from the prominent 32BJ SEIU and Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, but misspelled the names of both unions’ presidents.
A campaign spokesperson told The Post that the housing plan will be corrected.
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