It’s the semi-silent partner of some political campaigns.
This election season, political experts say some candidates aren’t just using artificial intelligence for AI-generated ads against their opponents; they’re also using it for other means.
“AI, I think, is becoming already and will get even bigger when it comes to doing opposition research by one campaign on another campaign,” said Grant Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University.
The New York Times reports that campaigns have spent more than $137 million on AI ads, noting that researchers from Wesleyan University identified more than 220 such examples.
But Reeher says campaigns’ other uses of AI may be “under the radar” right now.
“It’s going to be huge in our political system whether that’s identifying likely voters, coming up with canvassing plans, crafting messages,” he said.
The Chamber of Progress works with Congress and state lawmakers to advance AI governance.
Its vice president of U.S. and Government Relations, KJ Bagchi, says AI is “great at making a campaign more efficient, but it’s not great at being a substitute for having no message.”
He says there’s also a difference in how Democrats and Republicans are using it.
“You see Democrats using it technically more for research aspects of it, and we tend to see the Republican side use it more for ad generation,” said Bagchi.
He says campaigns using AI in general tend to make some voters cautious.
“I think the difficult part is that studies show that when voters see an image or they see a video that’s AI-generated that has that label on it, they tend to lose trust in what that message is,” said Bagchi.
Polling from Pew Research in 2025 supports this. Results found that 71% of Americans would like a political candidate “less” if they knew AI helped write their speech.