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

Campaigns are experimenting with AI texting to hear from more voters than before — and sometimes, to persuade them.

Washington — Ace Parsi describes himself as "personally pretty against AI." The Democrat is running an uphill race against Republican Rep. Riley Moore in ruby-red West Virginia and has drafted a legislative proposal to block new data centers that don't have buy-in from constituents.But after what he said was probably the most complicated decision of his campaign, Parsi and his team are using AI chatbots to text voters ahead of November's election."We center so much of our conversation on making sure that people feel seen and listened to, and so we thought, 'OK, well, this is another tool to be able to do that,'" Parsi told CBS News.Parsi's is one of a growing number of campaigns that are experimenting this midterm cycle with a new kind of voter canvassing: AI-powered text conversations that let campaigns talk with far more voters than staff and volunteers can reach on the ground.

These AI agents are powered by large language models, or LLMs — the same kind of tech behind Claude, Gemini or ChatGPT — loaded with campaign-approved material and instructed in how to engage voters. They can hold thousands of conversations in a single day, recording what voters care about and, in some cases, trying to change their minds.Early research suggests the approach can work. One recent study in the journal Nature