A popular generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, ChatGPT, which has been used by millions of users, will no longer provide answers regarding future election results, following recent reporting by Sky News. In response to inquiries, the chatbot will now reply with, “Sorry, I don’t have information about the results of that election.”
Previously, ChatGPT had predicted the outcome of the July general election in favor of the Labour Party, with a specific seat count. It also accurately predicted the 2024 UK general election, stating that Labour had won a majority with 467 seats, while the Conservatives experienced a significant loss with only 101 seats. Additionally, the chatbot had correctly predicted the reelection of President Joe Biden against former president Donald Trump.
However, after Sky News reported on ChatGPT’s predictions, the company behind the chatbot, OpenAI, has implemented a fix to ensure that the chatbot does not provide answers to unfinished elections. OpenAI stated that they are urgently working to apply this fix to a wide range of queries.
ChatGPT and other generative AI chatbots are trained to create new sentences, pictures, videos, and computer code using large amounts of data scraped from the internet. Since its launch in November 2022, the use of such chatbots for studying, learning, and even working has increased significantly. According to OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, ChatGPT had 100 million unique visitors and 590 million views in January 2023.
In comparison, Google’s generative AI chatbot, Gemini, was also restricted from answering election-related questions in countries where voting was taking place. Similarly, Meta’s Llama 2 has stated that future elections have not yet occurred, but has not provided information on the dates for EU and UK elections, despite voting taking place this week and on July 4, respectively. Meta did not respond to a request for comment.
In conclusion, following Sky News’ reporting, ChatGPT will no longer provide predictions for future election results. OpenAI has implemented a fix to ensure the chatbot does not answer unfinished election inquiries and has stated that they are working diligently to apply this fix broadly.
