Congressional candidates Connie Chan and Scott Wiener debate at the Sydney Goldstein Theater in San Francisco on March 31. The winner will replace retiring Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and the district will get its first new representative since 1987.

Artificial intelligence is easy. Comedy is hard. Just ask state Sen. Scott Wiener.

Wiener is locked in a tightening race with Supervisor Connie Chan to succeed San Francisco Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and the contest is shaping up to be the no-room-for-error, marquee U.S. House race in California.

So it’s something of a head-scratcher that the Wiener campaign decided to set up a website called ConnieChan.ai that featured a chatbot Chan imitator. 

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If you asked the chatbot about Chan’s positions on issues, it spat back answers that seemed designed to get a laugh. 

“I’m Connie, the world’s first AI trained to say ‘no’ to anything you ask … Bring me an idea and I’ll explain why it can’t, shouldn’t, and won’t happen.”

Like I said, comedy is hard. Take it from a political cartoonist. 

Predictably, the Chan campaign exploded, decrying the chatbot as “racist” and “sexist.” Critics included Pelosi, who has endorsed Chan and whose daughter Christine happens to be running to succeed Wiener in the state Senate.

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In an open letter posted on X (now that’s funny, using Elon Musk’s social media platform to complain about AI), Pelosi and eight........

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