Campaign texts, powered by AI: How new tech is shaping voter outreach

Campaigns heading into November's midterms are increasingly using AI chatbots to text voters, a tool that lets a small team hold thousands of conversations in a day. The agents run on large language models fed only material a campaign approves, such as website content, speeches and press releases, and they log what voters care about and sometimes try to sway them. The technology is advancing faster than the rules governing it, and in most states campaigns need not disclose that a voter is texting with software, according to CBS News.

Democrat Ace Parsi, challenging Republican Rep. Riley Moore in West Virginia, says he is personally opposed to AI yet decided to adopt the bots so voters feel heard. Monica Biddix, his campaign manager, says the team gets full transcripts of every exchange along with summaries and scores for how closely each voter aligns with the candidate. Marty Santalucia of the Democratic firm Vector Political says his company has sent over 3 million texts, producing more than 35,000 conversations. Tom Carroll, founder of Convos. ai, says his system rates voters from 0 to 100 so campaigns know whom to pursue.

Summarized by PolitiKool from CBS News’s reporting. Read the full story at CBS News →