Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s 29-page housing plan included a garbled section with incomplete sentences and a link to a citation retrieved by ChatGPT.
For former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the release of his housing plan on Sunday was to be a major policy moment in his campaign to become mayor of New York City, which is facing its worst housing crunch in more than 50 years.
He spoke about it at a Sunday morning church service; promised to build and preserve 500,000 units of housing, most of them “affordable”; and prominently noted his years working as housing secretary for the Clinton administration.
But the impact of his plan was diluted by a distinctly 21st-century imbroglio, one involving artificial intelligence, voice-to-text software and questionable proofreading skills.
The 29-page housing plan included incoherent babble and a ChatGPT-derived hyperlink to a news article, as was first reported by Hell Gate, a local news site.
The episode, in its apparent carelessness, fueled criticism of Mr. Cuomo, who, despite having quickly accumulated more than $1.5 million in fund-raising dollars, has limited his media availability and allowed his campaign to rest heavily on name recognition.
“I did the hard work to pass city laws that will create 120,000 new housing units,” Adrienne Adams, the New York City Council speaker who is among eight prominent Democrats challenging Mr. Cuomo in the mayoral primary, wrote on social media. “Andrew Cuomo asked ChatGPT what his housing policy should be. Guess someone does need on-the-job training.”
