This is politics - attempting to treat specific situations reasonably is the fast path to a kerfuffle. Note that if Phillips' campaign thinks this would have been good for him, it might easily be perceived bad for someone else. And that is an unstable equilibrium that easily leads to political escalations using OpenAI technology.

Clear lines on what shan't be done (lines drawn far away from the real grey areas) is a position that is both prudent and respectable by OpenAI.

Yes, I agree. OpenAI is wise to take this course, and the campaign won't be wrong to work around it by using an open model (in my opinion).

Yes, it's apparently consensual and transparent:

> Dean.Bot didn’t all-out pretend to be Phillips himself; before engaging with Dean.Bot, website visitors would be shown a disclaimer describing the nature of the chatbot.