Activist Wasantha Mudalige of the People’s Struggle Movement has alleged serious irregularities in a Sri Lanka Police tender to buy body cameras, claiming the tender’s Terms of Reference (TOR) was generated with ChatGPT and issued without the AI output being edited out.
“Anyone reading this TOR document can clearly see that it was prepared using Artificial Intelligence. Even the lines generated when using ChatGPT have been left as they are without being removed,” Mudalige told a media briefing, the Daily Mirror reported.
“Instead of carefully drafting procurement documents considering the technical requirements suitable for Sri Lanka Police and the technical standards used in other countries, this is the kind of farce that happens when you hastily throw things into ChatGPT,” he said, asking why the document had not been re-read and corrected before issue.
The bid spread
Mudalige argued that the price range in the returned bids was itself evidence that the specifications were inadequate. Bids ran from Rs. 50 million to Rs. 360 million — a roughly sevenfold gap.
“There can be small price differences among companies, but how can there be a seven-fold gap?” he said. He pointed to two bids from within the same state-owned group: Sri Lanka Telecom at around Rs. 170 million and Mobitel at around Rs. 60 million.
What is being bought
The police procurement unit called for tenders in March this year for 500 body cameras and 70 docking stations, Newswire reported.
Mudalige said he supported the cameras in principle, citing continuing reports of deaths and assaults in police custody, but argued that 500 units are too few and that CCTV inside police stations is also needed. He questioned whether a small initial order at low prices could later be followed by a larger order to the same supplier at higher prices.
He further alleged the process had been structured to favour an individual aligned with the government, and called for the tender to be cancelled and restarted.
These are allegations by an opposition activist. No response from the Sri Lanka Police, the procurement unit or the government had been reported at the time of writing.
