The Year of the A.I. Election That Wasn’t

More than 30 tech companies have pitched A.I. tools to political campaigns for November’s election. However, the campaigns have been cautious.

Sheera Frenkel, who reported from San Francisco, interviewed 23 tech companies and seven campaigns for this article.

On August 21, 2024, at 10:57 a.m. ET, Matthew Diemer, a Democrat running for election in Ohio’s Seventh Congressional District, was approached by the artificial intelligence company Civox with a pitch: A.I.-backed voice technology that could make tens of thousands of personalized phone calls to voters using Mr. Diemer’s talking points and sense of humor.

His campaign agreed to try out the technology, but it turned out that the only thing voters disliked more than a robocall was an A.I.-backed one. Civox’s A.I. program made almost 1,000 calls to voters in five minutes, but nearly all of them hung up when they heard a voice that identified itself as an A.I. volunteer.

“People just didn’t want to be on the phone, and they especially didn’t want to be on the phone when they heard they were talking to an A.I. program,” said Mr. Diemer.

This was supposed to be the year of the A.I. election. With the rise of A.I. tools like chatbots and image generators, over 30 tech companies have offered A.I. products to various political campaigns recently. These companies, mostly smaller firms such as BHuman, VoterVoice, and Poll the People, provide products that reorganize voter rolls, expand robocalls, and create A.I.-generated likenesses of candidates for virtual meet-and-greets.

Despite these offerings, campaigns are largely hesitant to adopt A.I. technology. Interviews with 23 tech companies and seven political campaigns revealed that only a few candidates are utilizing A.I., and even fewer are willing to admit it. Some companies reported that campaigns agreed to purchase their technology only if they could ensure that the public would never find out they had used A.I.