By David E. Clementson, University of Georgia
Political campaign ads and donor solicitations have long been deceptive. In 2004, for example, U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry, a Democrat, aired an ad stating that Republican opponent George W. Bush “says sending jobs overseas ‘makes sense’ for America.”
Bush never said such a thing.
The next day Bush responded by releasing an ad saying Kerry “supported higher taxes over 350 times.” This too was a false claim.
These days, the internet has gone wild with deceptive political ads. Ads often pose as polls and have misleading clickbait headlines.
Campaign fundraising solicitations are also rife with deception. An analysis of 317,366 political emails sent during the 2020 election in the U.S. found that deception was the norm. For example, a campaign manipulates recipients into opening the emails by lying about the sender’s identity and using subject lines that trick the recipient into thinking the sender is replying to the donor, or claims the email is “NOT asking for money” but then asks for money. Both Republicans and Democrats do it.
Campaigns are now rapidly embracing artificial intelligence for composing and producing ads and donor solicitations. The results are impressive: Democratic campaigns found that donor letters written by AI were more effective than letters written by humans at writing personalized text that persuades recipients to click and send donations.
And AI has benefits for democracy, such as helping...
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