A technology supporting Democratic candidates is leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) in its election outreach endeavors. Tech for Campaigns, which uses digital marketing and data for campaign purposes, is now utilizing generative AI to create digital advertisements and fundraising emails. These tools are ‘AI-aided,’ meaning they are managed and vetted by humans, and form part of a broader effort to help underfunded campaigns conserve resources and succeed in competitive races.
Jessica Alter, the co-founder of Tech for Campaigns, confirmed that the model has already produced results. The group, which originally utilized generative AI tools like Google’s Bard and ChatGPT, now plans to roll out its own suite of AI-enabled tools labeled “TFC Learning Engine.”
In 2023, an experiment across 14 Virginia campaigns showed that AI-aided emails garnered three to four times more fundraising dollars per work hour than solely human-written ones. “It can help generate ad ideas. It could help generate even regular marketing material like flyers and signs… and if you have data, it can help you analyze that data and pull out insight,” Alter said.
Generative AI garnered attention following the 2022 release of OpenAI’s product, ChatGPT, and has since expanded, offering tools that generate text, images, human voices, and video from simple prompts, diverging from previous AI technology that merely manipulated existing media.
However, this development occurs amid controversy surrounding AI’s use in politics. OpenAI declared in January that it won’t allow its applications for political campaigning. The Federal Communications Commission outlawed AI-generated robocalls following an impersonated call of President Joe Biden. AI companies have signed a pledge to prevent their algorithms from election interference use, and a bipartisan task force centered on AI was formed by House leaders to examine legal accountability for AI-caused election interference.