ChatGPT and Claude Will Be a Force in Elections. Nobody Knows What to Do About It.

Chatbots have already changed how voters get information. Political operatives just don’t know what they can do to change what the chatbots say.

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Gareth Fuller/AP

Millions of people now regularly turn to artificial intelligence chatbots like Claude and ChatGPT to answer any of life’s pressing questions. Later this year, political operatives expect voters to turn to the chatbots with another one: who should I vote for?

Most of those operatives — Republicans and Democrats — just have no clue what the chatbots will say. Or what they can do about unpleasant answers.

Six months before November’s critical election, some of the most influential sources of information on the internet remain a black box for operatives in both parties. Many privately concede that they — and the political committees and groups they work for — have spent little time thinking about large language models, or LLMs, they consider largely inscrutable.