Political candidates are experimenting with artificial intelligence behind the curtain to better reach voters, brainstorm messaging, and raise money—expanding use of the burgeoning technology on the campaign trail.
Republican and Democratic candidates, political action, and fundraising committees have spent millions of dollars in the 2024 election cycle on AI-informed products, campaign finance records show.
Companies offer a range of AI-driven services, such as drafting copy for digital advertisements or nudging voters for donations via text, that represent the more mundane ways the technology is transforming politics and helping campaigns save time and money.
AI is changing how campaigns operate right now “in the most boring way imaginable,” according to Mike Nellis, founder and CEO of Democratic digital fundraising agency Authentic. His clients, ranging from senators to House Democratic leaders, use his AI-powered content writer, Quiller.
Still, AI’s adoption by political campaigns has so far been underwhelming. Public opinions on AI have largely skewed toward fear rather than excitement, numerous polls show. The rise of deepfakes has fueled concerns that AI can create misinformation and sow distrust in elections. Federal regulators and states have been trying to set rules on the technology to minimize risks. That’s left many politicians hesitant to embrace the technology, despite its potential benefits.
Consultants and companies say that with better education and awareness of AI’s opportunities—and increased prevalence and availability of safe and effective tools—the political sphere is bound to get on board.
“Campaigns are under-utilizing AI right now,” Nellis said. “Campaigns are generally slow to adopt new technology because people are drowning, they don’t understand it, they don’t have the time to learn it.”
“The actual AI election will be 2028,” he added.
Experimentation Cycle
A slew of Republican party organizations and candidates, including former President
The company bills itself as the “ultimate command center” for campaigns, offering tools to automate repetitive tasks, create targeted digital ads, track performance, and optimize messaging, according to its website.
Political operatives are using AI the same way companies have been racing to adopt the technology.
“There’s a lot of opportunity” to use AI to drive efficiency and productivity, Jason Thielman, executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in an interview with Bloomberg Government earlier this year. That’s especially true in responding to the general public “more quickly.”
Thielman said he’s played around with AI-powered chatbots like
Republicans and Democrats have spent a few tens of thousands of dollars on Otter.ai, which records and transcribes conversations in real time, takes notes, and provides summaries. The platform also has an internal chatbot that can answer questions and complete tasks quickly, such as drafting press releases and analyzing candidates’ speeches.
The company’s chief executive Sam Liang said he wasn’t that surprised to learn that campaigns are using the tool. He compared political campaigning to marketing and sales jobs—a major customer base of the company—saying candidates need to market their message and sell themselves to voters.
“We’re definitely neutral. We’re not supporting one or the other,” Liang said in a Zoom interview. But “hey, maybe the party that used the AI more effectively eventually will win the election. I don’t know whether that’s true, but you know, AI can definitely help.”
Concern Over Deepfakes
Campaigns are operating without federal guidance on AI, which would provide certainty on how they might deploy the technology. Neither Congress nor the FEC has set rules on AI use in campaigns. States across the country, meanwhile, have stepped in with a hodgepodge of laws, but most are confined to restricting AI-generated deepfakes in elections.
“The campaigns are struggling a little bit with some of those issues,” said Wiley Rein LLP partner Andrew Woodson, a former House Republican staffer who now advises campaigns and PACs on election compliance law. “Nothing brings Republican and Democratic legislators together like the potential for being deepfaked.”
AI Election Deepfake Bills Gain Ground in New York, Other States
Some leading companies like OpenAI have also put forth policies to prevent abuse in elections, such as misleading deepfakes and chatbots impersonating candidates, the company announced in a January blog post. Still, campaigns can use ChatGPT for general purposes, including summarizing notes and brainstorming messaging. Candidates and affiliated party organizations reported spending a few thousand dollars on OpenAI products since 2023, according to campaign finance records.
The campaigns leaning into AI this election season are considered early adopters of the techology, opening the door for its potential widespread use, as has been the case for previous new technologies in politics.
Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (D), in creating the first online fundraising program in 2004, paved the way for Barack Obama’s successful 2008 presidential campaign to deploy digital infrastructure to help raise money from grassroots supporters. Obama’s early experimentation with social media the same year led to others using those platforms by 2012.
Betsy Hoover, founder and managing partner at Higher Ground Labs, a venture fund investing in dozens of startups providing tech to Democratic campaigns, said she hopes the current experimentation cycle turns into people taking advantage of AI’s “opportunities in a more robust way.”
“AI is a tool in our toolbox, and we should be using it. We proved that it works. We proved that it saves resources,” Hoover said.
Speeding Up Work
Campaigns open to using the technology have found success in crafting or speeding up messages to their supporters. Major Democratic Senate and House campaigns and affiliated party organizations, such as those of Sen.
House Majority PAC, the top-spending super political action committee for House Democrats, has used TruVerse to respond to people who message them on
Rep.
Before the adoption of the AI tool, along with the Supreme Court’s 2021 decision in favor of robo-dialing, that process used to require a dozen staffers working over two days to replicate. His campaign also marked Star Wars day with an AI-generated image of the congressman in Jedi robes.
AI tools are also proving useful in races further down-ballot, where candidates have smaller budgets and are typically under-resourced and eager for new methods to bolster their campaigns.
Kentucky-based Blue Dot Consulting last month began working with BattlegroundAI, a new startup backed by Higher Ground Labs that offers AI-powered advertising tools to progressive campaigns.
The platform is like a “super-duper paid intern” that “creates efficiency” and “saves us time,” said Taylor Coots, who with his wife runs the consulting firm, serving Democratic candidates and causes in the state.
“It’s a first draft. Nothing would ever go out the door without us looking at it,” Coots added, but AI is “an obvious way” for campaigns and organizations to help gain a competitive advantage.
Rising Uses of AI
Digital marketer Maya Hutchinson, who launched BattlegroundAI this year, said initial clients—local and state campaigns, consultants, and agencies on the left—have used the platform easily and expressed an interest in more tools. The company offers a “basic” version for free to access advertising and content-writing resources, as well as a $19-a-month “pro” version.
“This is ultimately a technology that is decided by us,” Hutchinson said. “We are creating a new tool, and we have the decision-making power. We cannot let fear drive our decision-making.”
Tech for Campaigns, a nonprofit founded in 2017 by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, is also working at the state level to empower Democratic candidates with AI.
The group boasts more than 18,000 tech volunteers who help run the digital side—emails, websites, marketing—for campaigns in key battleground states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Arizona, according to Jessica Alter, a co-founder and board member. In the 2023 Virginia elections, the group found that AI-aided emails raised three to four times more dollars per work. Another internal AI-powered tool provides best practices to campaigns based on data collected from previous election cycles.
Any new technology has potential downsides and guardrails are crucial, but there needs to be a “more balanced conversation about what the upsides are,” Alter said.
“AI is powerful and here to stay,” she continued. “It’s important that we help elected officials and their campaign staff on how it can be used safely.”
— With assistance from
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