{"id":7637,"date":"2025-10-14T05:03:43","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T05:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/14\/ai-and-the-future-of-american-politics-html\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T05:03:43","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T05:03:43","slug":"ai-and-the-future-of-american-politics-html","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/14\/ai-and-the-future-of-american-politics-html\/","title":{"rendered":"AI and the Future of American Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
AI and the Future of American Politics<\/div>\n

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Two years ago, Americans anxious about the forthcoming 2024 presidential election were considering the malevolent force of an election influencer: artificial intelligence. Over the past several years, we have seen plenty<\/a> of<\/a> warning<\/a> signs<\/a> from elections worldwide demonstrating how AI can be used to propagate misinformation and alter the political landscape, whether by trolls<\/a> on social media, foreign<\/a> influencers<\/a>, or even a street magician<\/a>.<\/a> AI is poised to play a more volatile role than ever before in America\u2019s next federal election in 2026. We can already see how different groups of political actors are approaching AI. Professional campaigners are using AI to accelerate the traditional tactics of electioneering; organizers are using it to reinvent how movements are built; and citizens are using it both to express themselves and amplify their side\u2019s messaging. Because there are so few rules, and so little prospect of regulatory action, around AI\u2019s role in politics, there is no oversight of these activities, and no safeguards against the dramatic potential impacts for our democracy.<\/p>\n

The Campaigners<\/h3>\n

Campaigners\u2014messengers, ad buyers, fundraisers, and strategists\u2014are focused on efficiency and optimization. To them, AI is a way to augment or even replace expensive humans who traditionally perform tasks like personalizing emails, texting donation solicitations, and deciding what platforms and audiences to target.<\/p>\n

This is an incremental evolution of the computerization of campaigning that has been underway for decades. For example, the progressive campaign infrastructure group Tech for Campaigns claims<\/a> it used AI in the 2024 cycle to reduce the time spent drafting fundraising solicitations by one-third. If AI is working well here, you won\u2019t notice the difference between an annoying campaign solicitation written by a human staffer and an annoying one written by AI.<\/p>\n

But AI is scaling these capabilities, which is likely to make them even more ubiquitous. This will make the biggest difference for challengers to incumbents in safe seats, who see AI as both a tacitly useful tool and an attention-grabbing way to get their race into the headlines. Jason Palmer<\/a>, the little-known Democratic primary challenger to Joe Biden, successfully won the American Samoa primary while extensively leveraging AI avatars for campaigning.<\/p>\n

Such tactics were sometimes deployed as publicity stunts in the 2024 cycle; they were firsts that got attention. Pennsylvania Democratic Congressional candidate Shamaine Daniels<\/a> became the first to use a conversational AI robocaller in 2023. Two long-shot challengers to Rep. Don Beyer used an AI avatar<\/a> to represent the incumbent in a live debate last October after he declined to participate. In 2026, voters who have seen years of the official White House X account posting deepfaked memes<\/a> of Donald Trump will be desensitized to the use of AI in political communications.<\/p>\n

Strategists are also turning to AI to interpret public opinion data and provide more fine-grained insight<\/a> into the perspective of different voters. This might sound like AIs replacing people in opinion polls, but it is really a continuation<\/a> of the evolution of political polling into a data-driven science over the last several decades.<\/p>\n

A recent survey<\/a> by the American Association of Political Consultants found that a majority of their members\u2019 firms already use AI regularly in their work, and more than 40 percent believe it will \u201cfundamentally transform\u201d the future of their profession. If these emerging AI tools become popular in the midterms, it won\u2019t just be a few candidates from the tightest national races texting you three times a day. It may also be the member of Congress in the safe district next to you, and your state representative, and your school board members.<\/p>\n

The development and use of AI in campaigning is different depending on what side of the aisle you look at. On the Republican side, Push Digital Group is going \u201call in<\/a>\u201d on a new AI initiative<\/a>, using the technology to create hundreds of ad variants for their clients automatically, as well as assisting with strategy, targeting, and data analysis. On the other side, the National Democratic Training Committee recently released a playbook<\/a> for using AI. Quiller<\/a> is building an AI-powered fundraising platform aimed at drastically reducing the time campaigns spend producing emails and texts. Progressive-aligned startups Chorus AI<\/a> and BattlegroundAI<\/a> are offering AI tools for automatically generating ads for use on social media and other digital platforms. DonorAtlas<\/a> automates data collection on potential donors, and RivalMind AI<\/a> focuses on political research and strategy, automating the production of candidate dossiers.<\/p>\n

For now, there seems to be an investment gap between Democratic- and Republican-aligned technology innovators. Progressive venture fund Higher Ground Labs<\/a> boasts $50 million in deployed investments since 2017 and a significant focus on AI<\/a>. Republican-aligned counterparts operate on a much smaller scale. Startup Caucus has announced one investment\u2014of $50,000\u2014since 2022. The Center for Campaign Innovation<\/a> funds research projects and events, not companies. This echoes a longstanding gap in campaign technology between Democratic- and Republican-aligned fundraising platforms<\/a> ActBlue and WinRed, which has landed the former in Republicans\u2019 political crosshairs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Of course, not all campaign technology innovations will be visible. In 2016, the Trump campaign vocally eschewed using data<\/a> to drive campaign strategy and appeared to be falling way behind<\/a> on ad spending, but was\u2014we learned in retrospect\u2014actually<\/a> leaning heavily into digital advertising and making use of new controversial mechanisms for accessing and exploiting voters\u2019 social media data with vendor Cambridge Analytica<\/a>. The most impactful uses of AI in the 2026 midterms may not be known until 2027 or beyond.<\/p>\n

The Organizers<\/h3>\n

Beyond the realm of political consultants driving ad buys and fundraising appeals, organizers are using AI in ways that feel more radically new.<\/p>\n

The hypothetical potential of AI to drive political movements was illustrated in 2022 when a Danish artist collective used an AI model to found a political party, the Synthetic Party<\/a>, and generate its policy goals. This was more of an art project than a popular movement, but it demonstrated that AIs\u2014synthesizing the expressions and policy interests of humans\u2014can formulate a political platform. In 2025, Denmark hosted a \u201csummit<\/a>\u201d of eight such AI political agents where attendees could witness \u201ccontinuously orchestrate[d] algorithmic micro-assemblies, spontaneous deliberations, and impromptu policy-making\u201d by the participating AIs.<\/p>\n

The more viable version of this concept lies in the use of AIs to facilitate deliberation. AIs are being used to help legislators<\/a> collect input from constituents and to hold large-scale citizen assemblies<\/a>. This kind of AI-driven \u201csensemaking<\/a>\u201d may play a powerful role in the future of public policy. Some research<\/a> has suggested that AI can be as or more effective than humans in helping people find common ground on controversial policy issues.<\/p>\n

Another movement for \u201cPublic AI<\/a>\u201d is focused on wresting AI from the hands of corporations to put people, through their governments, in control. Civic technologists in national governments from Singapore<\/a>, Japan<\/a>, Sweden<\/a>, and Switzerland<\/a> are building their own alternatives to Big Tech AI models, for use in public administration and distribution as a public good<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Labor organizers have a particularly interesting relationship to AI. At the same time that they are galvanizing<\/a> mass resistance against the replacement or endangerment of human workers by AI, many are racing to leverage the technology in their own work to build power.<\/p>\n

Some entrepreneurial organizers have used AI in the past few years as tools<\/a> for activating, connecting, answering questions for, and providing guidance to their members. In the UK, the Centre for Responsible Union AI<\/a> studies and promotes the use of AI by unions; they\u2019ve published several case studies<\/a>. The UK Public and Commercial Services Union<\/a> has used AI to help their reps simulate recruitment conversations before going into the field. The Belgian union ACV-CVS<\/a> has used AI to sort hundreds of emails per day from members to help them respond more efficiently. Software companies such as Quorum<\/a> are increasingly offering AI-driven products to cater to the needs of organizers and grassroots campaigns.<\/p>\n

But unions have also leveraged AI for its symbolic power. In the U.S., the Screen Actors Guild held up the specter of AI displacement of creative labor to attract public attention and sympathy, and the ETUC (the European confederation of trade unions) developed a policy platform<\/a> for responding to AI.<\/p>\n

Finally, some union organizers have leveraged AI in more provocative ways. Some have applied it to hacking the \u201cbossware\u201d AI to subvert<\/a> the exploitative intent or disrupt<\/a> the anti-union practices of their managers.<\/p>\n

The Citizens<\/h3>\n

Many of the tasks we\u2019ve talked about so far are familiar use cases to anyone working in office and management settings: writing emails, providing user (or voter, or member) support, doing research.<\/p>\n

But even mundane tasks, when automated at scale and targeted at specific ends, can be pernicious. AI is not neutral. It can be applied by many actors for many purposes. In the hands of the most numerous and diverse actors in a democracy\u2014the citizens\u2014that has profound implications.<\/p>\n

Conservative activists in Georgia and Florida have used a tool named EagleAI<\/a> to automate challenging voter registration en masse (although the tool\u2019s creator later denied<\/a> that it uses AI). In a nonpartisan electoral management context with access to accurate data sources, such automated review of electoral registrations might be useful and effective. In this hyperpartisan context, AI merely serves to amplify the proclivities of activists at the extreme of their movements. This trend will continue unabated in 2026.<\/p>\n

Of course, citizens can use AI to safeguard the integrity of elections. In Ghana\u2019s 2024 presidential election, civic organizations used an AI tool to automatically detect and mitigate electoral disinformation<\/a> spread on social media<\/a>. The same year, Kenyan protesters<\/a> developed specialized chatbots to distribute information about a controversial finance bill in Parliament and instances of government corruption.<\/p>\n

So far, the biggest way Americans have leveraged AI in politics is in self-expression. About ten million Americans<\/a> have used the chatbot Resistbot to help draft and send messages to their elected leaders. It\u2019s hard to find statistics on how widely adopted tools like this are, but researchers have estimated<\/a> that, as of 2024, about one in five consumer complaints to the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was written with the assistance of AI.<\/p>\n

OpenAI operates security programs to disrupt<\/a> foreign influence operations and maintains restrictions<\/a> on political use in its terms of service, but this is hardly sufficient<\/a> to deter use of AI technologies for whatever purpose. And widely available free models give anyone the ability to attempt this on their own.<\/p>\n

But this could change. The most ominous sign of AI\u2019s potential to disrupt elections is not the deepfakes and misinformation. Rather, it may be the use of AI by the Trump administration to surveil and punish<\/a> political speech on social media and other online platforms. The scalability and sophistication of AI tools give governments with authoritarian intent unprecedented power to police and selectively limit political speech.<\/p>\n

What About the Midterms?<\/h3>\n

These examples illustrate AI\u2019s pluripotent role as a force multiplier. The same technology used by different actors\u2014campaigners, organizers, citizens, and governments\u2014leads to wildly different impacts. We can\u2019t know for sure what the net result will be. In the end, it will be the interactions and intersections of these uses that matters, and their unstable dynamics will make future elections even more unpredictable than in the past.<\/p>\n

For now, the decisions of how and when to use AI lie largely with individuals and the political entities they lead. Whether or not you personally trust AI to write an email for you or make a decision about you hardly matters. If a campaign, an interest group, or a fellow citizen trusts it for that purpose, they are free to use it.<\/p>\n

It seems unlikely that Congress or the Trump administration will put guardrails around the use of AI in politics. AI companies have rapidly emerged as among the biggest lobbyists<\/a> in Washington, reportedly dumping $100 million<\/a> toward preventing regulation, with a focus on influencing candidate behavior before the midterm elections. The Trump administration seems open and responsive<\/a> to their appeals.<\/p>\n

The ultimate effect of AI on the midterms will largely depend on the experimentation happening now. Candidates and organizations across the political spectrum have ample opportunity\u2014but a ticking clock\u2014to find effective ways to use the technology. Those that do will have little to stop them from exploiting it.<\/p>\n

This essay was written with Nathan E. Sanders, and originally appeared in The American Prospect<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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AI and the Future of American Politics Two years ago, Americans anxious about the forthcoming 2024 presidential election were considering the malevolent force of an election influencer: artificial intelligence. Over the past several years, we have seen plenty of warning signs from elections worldwide demonstrating how AI can be used to propagate misinformation and alter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[167,57,302,268,1],"tags":[87],"class_list":["post-7637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai","category-bruce-schneier","category-democracy","category-llm","category-uncategorized","tag-bruce-schneier"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7637"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/serisec.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}