How AI is already changing the 2024 election

"If 2008 and 2012 were the Facebook elections, this will be the AI election — but it'll be massively more disruptive," said Tom Newhouse, vice president of digital marketing at Convergence Media, a Republican firm that uses AI.

• "I would be willing to bet that the 'October surprise' next year is from AI," he said, referring to the possibility of a game-changing event or revelation just before the November elections.

Zoom in: AI programs are being used for various tasks in just-launched 2024 campaigns, most notably for advertising but also for time-consuming research and office work.

• Immediately after President Biden announced his re-election campaign, the Republican National Committee released an AI-generated video with a series of fictitious images showing a dystopian, chaotic America under a Biden second term.
• The video included scenes from an imaginary Biden and Kamala Harris victory party on election night that contorted their faces and applied ominous shadows throughout.
• Digital firms retained by campaigns are using machine learning to figure out when's best to send text messages to voters, and enlisting AI to quickly identify soundbites from long videos — freeing up staffers and contractors for other work.
• One Democratic pollster told Axios he asked ChatGPT to write a first draft of a gubernatorial candidate's biography, a task that would have taken him about 45 minutes. It took ChatGPT just a few seconds.

Beyond promotional material, AI is being used to improve fundraising efficiency by targeting prospective donors and voters with increasing specificity.

• It allows an upstart campaign with few resources to create just as much content and reach specific voters just as effectively as larger campaigns with more resources.
• In 2020 or 2016, for example, a 35-year-old male might have been targeted as part of a 250,000-person audience, using researchers hired to build databases filled with information from voter files, Newhouse notes.
• Now, a campaign can zero in on that voter as one of 25,000 who may live in a certain Zip code and be a fan of the Washington Nationals or Duke Blue Devils, for example.

How it works: Consultants are using machine learning to sweep large amounts of data — such as a person's location, income and media habits — to find patterns that drive donations or support for a candidate, and create lists ranking likely supporters.

• Democrats who sometimes watch Fox News make great targets for political campaigns, Sterling Data Company, a Democratic firm working with Akkio's AI platform, has found. Sterling figures that's because it takes a certain dedication to Democratic policies to venture to Fox for an opposing view.

• AI is great for "a large candidate — that could be a presidential candidate or anyone who's raising money from a lot more people," says Jonathon Reilly, co-founder and COO of Akkio. "The larger your sorting problem, the more leverage you'll get out of using AI."

Yes, but: AI technology also can be used to flood voters with disinformation.

• It can create AI-generated audio, robocalls, or text messages about a candidate and disperse them to millions in an instant.
• After the RNC ad ran last Tuesday, the White House responded to several queries about whether the material featuring Biden was real or fake.

Thought bubble: The disinformation concern with AI extends beyond fake video images, Axios' chief tech correspondent Ina Fried writes:

• AI can be used to dub over a speech to twist a candidate's words.
• It's a practice that has been used for humor, but incendiary words inserted into an AI-generated video that's made to look as if the candidate actually said them could muddy the waters between fact and fiction.
• And the mere existence of deep-fake technology could be used by politicians to suggest that a piece of genuine but unflattering video is fake.