An AI Bot Is (Sort of) Running for Mayor in Wyoming

Victor Miller is running for mayor of Cheyenne, Wyoming, with an unusual campaign promise: If elected, he will not be calling the shots—an AI bot will. VIC, the Virtual Integrated Citizen, is a ChatGPT-based chatbot that Miller created. And Miller says the bot has better ideas—and a better grasp of the law—than many people currently serving in government.

“I realized that this entity is way smarter than me, and more importantly, way better than some of the outward-facing public servants I see,” he says. According to Miller, VIC will make the decisions and Miller will be its “meat puppet,” attending meetings, signing documents, and otherwise doing the corporeal job of running the city.

But whether VIC—and Victor—will be allowed to run at all is still an open question.

Because it’s not legal for a bot to run for office, Miller says he is technically the one on the ballot, at least on the candidate paperwork filed with the state.

When Miller went to register his candidacy at the county clerk’s office, he says, he “wanted to use Vic without my last name. And so I had read the statute, so it merely said that you have to print what you are generally referred to as. So you know, most people call me Vic. My name is Victor Miller. So on the ballot Vic is short for Victor Miller, the human.”

When Miller came home from filing, he told the then nameless chatbot about it and says it “actually came up with the name Virtual Integrated Citizen.”

In a statement to WIRED, Wyoming secretary of state Chuck Gray said, “We are monitoring this very closely to ensure uniform application of the Election Code.” Gray said that anyone running for office must be a “qualified elector,” “which necessitates being a real person. Therefore, an AI bot is not a qualified elector.” Gray also sent a letter to the county clerk raising concerns about VIC and suggesting that the clerk reject Miller’s application for candidacy.

In the letter, Gray wrote: “Mr. Miller’s application is in violation of both the letter, and spirit, of Wyoming’s Election Code.” Gray went on to say that even if “Vic” did represent Miller—and not the bot—this could still violate the law as it did not include Miller’s full first and last names.

VIC is built on top of OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4.0, and Miller says he didn’t reach out to the company to ask permission to use its software to build his bot candidate. The company has specific guidelines around how its products can be used in elections, but nothing about bot-governance.

OpenAI spokesperson Liz Bourgeois told WIRED in a statement that the company had “taken action against this GPT due to a violation of our policies against political campaigning.”

Miller says he hopes the company doesn’t take VIC offline, but he is prepared to move it to Meta’s Llama 3, which is open source, if need be.

VIC/Miller will be facing off against incumbent Patrick Collins as well as a handful of other candidates. Collins did not respond to a request for comment about his AI opponent.