Voters are turning to AI on politics. Is it up to the task?

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Trump says AI will be renamed ‘super intelligence’ in all US documents

Trump says AI will be renamed ‘super intelligence’ in all US documents

Artificial intelligence is playing a growing role in how voters get information about politics and elections, raising fresh questions about how the technology could influence the way voters stay informed.  

From chatbots to standard internet searches, voters this election cycle are interacting with AI-generated content, even when they may not realize it. 

Recent research on voters’ use of AI is forcing campaigns to rethink their digital strategies and reminding election officials the importance of upkeep regarding information online. 

“While people may have and should continue to have … a healthy dose of skepticism about some of the outputs, the reality is that [AI] outputs are going to be playing an increasing role,” Max Read, the director of civic innovation at the research organization Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told The Hill. “Both as a primary information source and point of information gathering for voters, but also impacting the information environment in more subtle ways.”

A handful of researchers this year are exploring how often voters intentionally use AI to answer election-related questions or accidentally interact with AI-generated content on social media or search engines. 

While some say it is likely too early to determine the extent of which AI is reshaping the information ecosystem, many researchers agree it is playing a larger role than in past elections. 

Despite skepticism over AI and its impact on society, Americans are using chatbots more than ever before, with U.S. adult usage up from a third in 2024 to about 50 percent in 2026. Amid the billions of questions chatbots receive daily, a study commissioned by the left-leaning marketing firm Orchestra found about 650,000 of these prompts relate to politics.  

OpenAI’s ChatGPT model and Google’s AI tools were the most frequent source for these queries. 

“The growth in which people have been turning to these tools for just information questions in general has been staggering, and even more so when........

© The Hill