Houston City Council candidate says opponent used AI to steal her platform

A Houston City Council At-Large candidate is accusing her opponent of copying her policy platform "word for word"—with a little help from AI.

Attorney Alejandra Salinas, who's running in the special election to fill the seat vacated by Dr. Letitia Plummer (now a Harris County Judge candidate), claims former City Council member and one-time mayoral hopeful Dwight Boykins plagiarized large portions of her campaign priorities page.

"The last thing we need representing us on the Houston City Council is an AI bot," Salinas said in a written statement.

Salinas cited findings from Originality.ai, an accurate AI, plagiarism and fact checker, that rated Boykins' policy pages as "100 percent likely to be written by AI."

"Boykin's page copies entire sentences word-for-word and substantially paraphrases the rest—like changing Salinas,' 'We can't stop the rain, but we can be smart about flood prevention,' to 'We can't stop the rain—but we can outsmart the floods,'" the statement reads.

Salinas' camp alleged her priorities page was published online before Boykins, who subsequently posted a "nearly identical" priorities page to his website.

When Chron attempted to visit Boykins' priorities page, the link led to a "404 Page Not Found" page instead. Salinas' priorities page appeared to remain unchanged, with public safety, affordable & reliable city services, infrastructure, water, equity, and defending democracy listed as her campaign's core items.

Chron contacted Boykin for comment, but did not hear back by publication.

Boykins' homepage reads that he is a "proud native Houstonian and former City Council member [who] has spent decades driving meaningful change across [the] city." It lists his work "eliminating food deserts and strengthening public safety and community wellness."

The down priorities page has not been updated as of Wednesday afternoon. Boykins served on the city council from 2013 to 2019, representing District D, which includes neighborhoods like the Museum District and Third Ward.

He unsuccessfully ran to sit at Houston's helm as mayor in 2019 and floated a run for Texas governor in 2018.