SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 8.7.2026 UPDATED
Ever since becoming a San Francisco Supervisor in 2021 Connie Chan has been subjected to vicious sexist racist red baiting attacks.
Now as a candidate for Congress representing San Francisco as successor to iconic Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi she is the target of a scurrilous AI campaign by her opponent State Senator Scott Wiener.
Scott Wiener thinks this is just the normal campaign activity. It’s not. “Falsities fraught with racist and sexist overtones” is how Connie Chan’s campaign describes the AI attack.
Excerpted from SF Gate 8.6.2026
State Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat running for Congress who is backed by Anthropic, just launched a chatbot of his opponent — and his team used Claude to do it.
The website, called ConnieChan.ai, launched on Monday morning and sarcastically refers to itself as “the world’s first AI trained to say no to anything you ask.” It prompts the user to type in a question, and the bot will spit out an answer impersonating Wiener’s opponent, District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan: “Bring me an idea and I’ll explain why it can’t, shouldn’t, and won’t happen,” it says.
The website, called ConnieChan.ai, launched on Monday morning and sarcastically refers to itself as “the world’s first AI trained to say no to anything you ask.” It prompts the user to type in a question, and the bot will spit out an answer impersonating Wiener’s opponent, District 1 Supervisor Connie Chan: “Bring me an idea and I’ll explain why it can’t, shouldn’t, and won’t happen,” it says.
Wiener has received over $4 million for his congressional campaign, and an Anthropic-funded PAC called Public First has committed $500,000 to support his candidacy. Anthropic also backed a tech regulation legislation package that Wiener authored last year. It requires big tech companies like Anthropic, OpenAI and Meta to publish safety reports when they release new AI products.
Wieners’s team told SFGATE that they spent $20,000 on two billboards in San Francisco promoting the chatbot. They will run until the end of the month.
https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/scott-wiener-anthropic-billboard-22372638.php
Top photo: Congressional candidate Connie Chan cited by San Francisco Police speaking out for workers at San Francisco International Airport – May 2026
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