Technology group hopes to help Democrats win with AI-generated ads and emails

A group of Democrat-supporting technologists is aiming to power this year’s election outreach efforts with the latest advances in artificial intelligence.

Tech for Campaigns, an organization that uses digital marketing and data to help Democratic candidates win elections, is now using AI to create digital ads and fundraising emails, all of which they say are managed and vetted by humans, or “AI-aided.” The tools are part of the group’s broader campaign to help cash-strapped campaigns save money and win tight races.

Generative AI burst onto the scene in late 2022 with OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT and has evolved into a wide variety of tools that can generate everything from text and images to human voices and video based on simple prompts. This technology is distinct from other AI technology that previously focused on manipulating existing media, often known as deepfake technology.

Jessica Alter, the organization’s co-founder, said its model has already paid dividends. The organization started by using off-the-shelf generative AI tools such as Google’s Bard and ChatGPT. Now, the organization is rolling out its own suite of AI-enabled tools called the “TFC Learning Engine,” which it plans to share with campaigns in the current election cycle.

She said even the early tests showed promise.

“In Virginia in 2023, we did an experiment across 14 campaigns. We tested AI-aided emails, which again means that we’re looking at them and editing them,” Alter said. “And what we were really testing for was, ‘Hey, can this help the campaigns on the productivity side of things?’”

She said the trial run found that AI-aided emails generated between three and four times more fundraising dollars per work hour than ones that were solely written