Pennsylvania candidate tests AI chatbot as voter outreach tool in congressional campaign

Pennsylvania Democrat Shamaine Daniels' congressional campaign is using a phone-banking tool powered by artificial intelligence. The chatbot engages in two-way conversations.

A phone-banking tool powered entirely by artificial intelligence is getting its first real-world test in a Pennsylvania Democrat’s congressional campaign.

The chatbot, named Ashley, calls voters and engages in two-way, interactive conversations about candidate Shamaine Daniels, one of seven Democrats running so far in next year's primary. The voice tool from the startup Civox represents one of many ways AI technology is breaking into politics ahead of the 2024 campaigns, but experts say its direct contact with voters could threaten data security and has the potential to undermine voter trust.

Daniels announced the partnership with Civox on Tuesday, saying the the first-of-its-kind political campaign tool had already completed more than 1,000 calls with likely Democratic primary voters in Pennsylvania's 10th House district, which includes the state capital, Harrisburg.

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Unlike other robocallers, Ashley doesn't use canned responses or give call recipients a menu of options. Instead, it uses generative AI technology to devise immediate humanlike responses to voter questions.

The tool was created by Civox in partnership with another new company, Conversation Labs. Civox CEO Ilya Mouzykantskii and co-founder Adam Reis, who also founded Conversation Labs, said they tested it rigorously to ensure it could accurately answer questions about Daniels’ policies and what differentiates her from other candidates in the race.

The founders said they decided to give the tool a machine-like voice because in internal testing, call recipients preferred that to other, more realistic voices.

"It’s often not the voice itself that influences how natural or human-feeling the conversation is," Reis said. "It’s often the nuances of interactions and how quickly it responds and the language it uses."

In a demonstration with Ashley on Tuesday, the tool disclosed that it was powered by AI and that the call was being recorded. When prompted, it clearly and accurately shared Daniels' positions on affordable health care and education reform.

It tactfully answered pointed questions about election integrity and the Republican who holds the seat, six-term incumbent Rep. Scott Perry, pausing only a few seconds before each response.

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But when asked off-topic questions, the tool sometimes got tripped up and shared false information. In a conversation about snacks, it said Cheetos were "known for being both delicious and health-conscious."

That's an example of an AI " hallucination " — a problem with still-evolving generative AI technology in which large language models tend to make statements that sound convincing but are false or made up.

Mouzykantskii said the mistake was fascinating but "not representative" of voters' experiences with the tool so far. "We have tested Ashley much more extensively on political topics than on the topic of food and nutrition," he said.

Voters' responses so far to Ashley have been mixed, said Joe Bachman of Indigo Strategies, a spokesperson for Daniels. He noted that while some call recipients engaged in thorough conversations, many stuck to one-word answers as one might in a phone conversation with a banking chatbot.

"There’s not a replacement for live one-on-one conversations, either on the phone or at doors," he said. "It’s a new technology. It’s going to take voters some time to get used to it, just as when campaigns started using SMS text messaging to communicate with voters."

He said the campaign felt the chatbot, which can speak over 20 languages, was a good opportunity to reach voters in the southern Pennsylvania district, which has a significant refugee population.

Mouzykantskii and Reis said they created Ashley using a combination of over 20 AI models, including both open-source and proprietary models. They declined to share what data its AI models are trained on and would not say whether they incorporated systems from OpenAI or other high-profile AI companies that have rules against usage in political campaigning.

Other entrepreneurs at the intersection of AI and politics said they were skeptical about Ashley's direct interaction with voters and more often advise campaigns to use the rapidly advancing technology on the back end of campaigns, such as in drafting advertising copy.

"The guidance I've offered and seen from most people is that they are steering away from AI personalities when it comes to politics and campaigns this cycle," said Betsy Hoover, a founding partner at the progressive tech accelerator and venture capital firm Higher Ground Labs. "You don't need people to be less trustful of politics right now. In fact, we need the opposite, and so this is not the cycle to try that."

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Mike Nellis, CEO of the progressive digital agency Authentic, said he was concerned about the possibility of the chatbot making mistakes in conversations and didn't believe there was enough data to say whether its calls would be effective in motivating voters. The data the tool gathers through its phone calls is another concern, he said.

"Right now, that large language model knows sensitive voter information and knows the voters' responses to it," Nellis said. "I don't know how safe and secure that is."

Mouzykantskii said Civox protects voter information in line with "political campaign, technology, industry standards" and added that he encourages regulators to pay attention to these emerging tools and set stronger guidelines for them.

Daniels, 45, is an immigration lawyer and member of the Harrisburg City Council making her second run for the congressional seat, which is in a Republican-leaning district. The state's primary election is April 23.

Perry beat Daniels in 2022 by 8 percentage points, easily outspending her.