Defeated Republican New York City Council candidate Ying Tan questioned how Democratic Councilwoman-elect Susan Zhuang can authentically represent her New York City district after she admitted to using artificial intelligence to answer questions from a local news publication.
Tan said she uses grammar-checking programs to correct her content but criticized Zhuang for using AI to copy and paste answers, telling Fox and Friends on Tuesday that the Democrat’s actions are “not normal.”
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“If she can't answer a single question on her own, how can she represent a district?” Tan asked.
“As a first-generation immigrant myself, I don't feel shy to speak with the accent I have, and during the campaign, I insisted on going out on the street to reach out to the voters, and also handwritten thousands of the letters,” Tan said. She and Zhuang are Chinese immigrants.
Zhuang was elected to the city council last month to represent District 43, New York City’s first Asian-majority district, with over 58% of the vote, according to unofficial results from the city's board of elections. Tan garnered over 26% of the vote.
The New York Post ran Zhuang’s responses to a questions-and-answers article from City and State through a popular AI detector called Copyleaks, which claims it yields a 99% accuracy rate in detecting AI-generated content. The platform detected her answers were written by AI.
In a text message response, Zhuang admitted using AI text generation tools in her answers, citing a language barrier.
“As an immigrant and Brooklyn’s first Chinese-American Councilwoman, I, like many of my fellow immigrants, use AI as a tool to help foster deeper understanding as well as for personal growth, particularly when English is not my primary language,” Zhuang said.
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Tan, who is weighing a 2025 run, according to the outlet, questioned Zhuang’s connection to the voters.
“In order to build a connection and trust between you and the voters is to be honest and to be your true self,” Tan said. “You have to make sure that you are showing the true side of yourself and how you feel so the voter can get out to vote for you, so I think she's taking advantage of the AI.”