SAO PAULO, Oct 29 (Reuters) - A close ally of Brazilian Senator Flavio Bolsonaro on Thursday said AI chatbot ChatGPT was responsible for language in a letter briefly posted on social media by the right-wing lawmaker describing himself as Brazil’s rightful “president-elect,” while insisting the mistake did not alter Bolsonaro’s view that the election was illegitimate.
Bolsonaro stunned Brazil’s political establishment on Wednesday by making the claim and alleging without evidence that Sunday’s runoff election, which he lost to leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva by more than 4 million votes, had been marred by fraud.
Roughly an hour after sharing the document, the senator deleted it from his accounts and published a revised version, replacing the term “president-elect” with “leader of Brazil.”
As Brazilian media and political observers speculated about the abrupt change, one of Bolsonaro’s closest allies suggested that the explanation for the mistake was not political, but technological: the use of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Right-wing influencer and podcast host Paulo Figueiredo, who serves as an unofficial spokesperson for the Bolsonaro family in the United States and first shared the letter with journalists, said the document had gone through several drafts and incorporated contributions from multiple people.
Figueiredo said that Bolsonaro’s younger brother, former Congressman Eduardo Bolsonaro, sought ChatGPT’s help to finalize the letter. According to Figueiredo, the chatbot inserted an outdated version of Brazil’s coat of arms and used a previous draft of the letter.
“When generating the document, AI ended up including an earlier version of the text, in which Flavio presented himself as the true ‘president-elect’,” Figueiredo wrote on X, adding the mistakes were noticed only after he distributed the letter to the press.
According to him, Bolsonaro ultimately opted for the term “leader” for legal and moral reasons. He added that those involved found the mistake “hilarious” and described tweaking the letter as “nothing major.”
OpenAI and Bolsonaro’s press officers did not immediately reply to requests for comment.
“In the end, the essential is expressed precisely by Flavio: these elections were illegitimate, he does not recognize the result, and he will continue fighting to restore democracy in Brazil,” Figueiredo said.
The senator arrived in Miami on Wednesday after leaving Brazil, where he refused to comply with a Supreme Court order to turn in his passports as part of a probe into alleged money laundering, in which he denies wrongdoing.
Bolsonaro’s decision to declare himself the country’s rightful “leader” has failed to garner support from key figures in his political camp, leaving him increasingly isolated.
Lula’s victory has been recognized by Brazil’s federal electoral court, global leaders, international observers, and Bolsonaro’s own party.
(Reporting by Fernando Cardoso, additional reporting by Luciana Magalhaes; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
