The Brazilian city of Porto Alegre recently introduced a pilot ordinance, which was later revealed to have been written by ChatGPT. The municipal council member who submitted the proposal deliberately concealed this.

In the city, taxpayers had to pay to replace stolen water meters. So Alderman Ramiro Rosario asked the chatbot to submit a proposal where this was no longer necessary. He used a 49-word prompt for this purpose. Rosario then presented the proposal to his 35 colleagues on the council, without saying he had changed the text. It also didn’t say anything about using ChatGPT.

“If I had revealed it earlier, it would not have even been possible to vote on the proposal. It would be unfair to the city’s residents not to approve the project just because it was written with artificial intelligence.” Rosario tells AP. The Council approved it unanimously, and the decree entered into force on November 23.

The council member says: “I am convinced that humanity will witness a new technological revolution.” “All the tools we have developed as a civilization can be used for evil and good. That’s why we need to show how they can be used for good.”

Eventually, City Council President Hamilton Sosmer learned that Rosario had used ChatGPT to write the proposal when the council member revealed it on social media. Süssmayr initially told local media that he believed it was a “dangerous precedent.” However, the president appears to have changed his mind. “I started looking into it more and saw that, for better or worse, this was going to be a trend.”

It has happened many times that ChatGPT has been used to write bills or amendments. For example, Massachusetts Democratic Senator Barry Feingold wrote a proposal to regulate AI with the help of ChatGPT. Politico writes, among other things, last July. Feingold believes a chatbot could be a good tool for the more difficult aspects of drafting laws, such as consulting existing laws.

The senator says it is important to be transparent about the use of artificial intelligence in this regard. “We want work created with ChatGPT to be watermarked,” he told the AP. “I support people using ChatGPT to write proposals, as long as they are clear.”