AI Money and Anxiety Are Powering This Election Cycle

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

**Michael Shepard** (0:09)
It's really coming at us all at once this year in this election cycle.

**David Gura** (0:14)
Artificial intelligence is on the ballot in many 2026 midterm elections. How to regulate it, what it means for jobs, for energy prices, and hundreds of millions of dollars are pouring into election races from competing super PACs, vying to steer the AI conversation.
Voters are getting more and more election information from AI, and they're seeing campaign ads made with it. As one former US official recently told Bloomberg, this is the first AI election.

**Michael Shepard** (0:41)
We're seeing it in the campaign financing. We're seeing it in AI as an issue itself, in the way that people are now becoming truly and acutely aware of its impact on the economy, and it's also becoming a campaign tool.

**David Gura** (0:57)
Michael Shepard is a Bloomberg Senior Editor for Technology and Strategic Industries, who focuses on artificial intelligence.

**Michael Shepard** (1:03)
It's rewriting the playbook for how candidates seek office and the strategies that they can use to gain an edge in competitive races.

**David Gura** (1:11)
Mike says the concerns about AI that are coming out this election season mirror the ones across our society, at a moment when AI can tell us just about anything, short of where the AI revolution will take us. This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura. On today's episode, the first AI elections, what's at stake and who's working on the answers.
Mike, let's start with campaign advertising. How has AI changed the kind of ads that the people see?

**Michael Shepard** (1:47)
This is actually, David, a great place to start because this is one of the most visible areas for voters and the public to see AI shaping the elections. Candidates are deploying it effectively on the campaign trail. And in the past, to get an advertisement or a message out, you would have to get a radio spot, a newspaper ad, very expensive television advertising. And for candidates that were on a shoestring budget or just starting out or didn't have a name, that was tough. But AI is enabling them to create images and curate them very quickly. It's also allowing candidates to develop deepfake ads, some that portray candidates in unfavorable lights to gain an edge in a race.

**David Gura** (2:32)
I got to imagine it's changing the way that voters research candidates, learn about candidates as well.

**Michael Shepard** (2:37)
Which sure is, David, because what we see is the same thing with politics that we see elsewhere in the economy. And there's some research by a progressive aligned group called Data for Progress that indicates that voters under the age of 45 are more likely to use AI as a tool to find out about candidates. And what that suggests also is that AI is a tool for political research is here to stay.

**David Gura** (3:05)
Mike, in your role helping to lead Bloomberg's Coverage of AI, you have a special vantage. You're based in Washington, so you're looking at the way these companies are trying to influence politics and the political conversation. This is an election in which a lot of these companies and their affiliates are pouring a lot of money into these races. What does that look like in broad terms?

**Michael Shepard** (3:25)
Well, in broad terms, it looks like a lot of cash.
And to give you an idea, the pledges so far that we've gathered from across the industry amount to $275 million across the US. And that, if fulfilled, would dwarf the amount that the crypto industry spent during the 2024 election when the digital currency industry was able to topple a number of democratic incumbents. And the AI industry is certainly trying to repeat that same playbook to its advantage.

**David Gura** (4:04)
Mike, I want to ask you about one race in particular, a primary race that took place here in New York City, involving Alex Boris. He was one of the candidates running in this primary, running to be the Democratic candidate in the 12th Congressional District, which includes a big part of Manhattan. Alex Boris lost that primary, but there was so much money in this one race. And I should say Michael Bloomberg, the owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, endorsed and contributed to the winning candidate, Michael Lasher's campaign.
But there was a lot of AI money in this race as well. What about it attracted so many big backers?

**Michael Shepard** (4:37)
Well, it was Alex Boris, really, who drew all of that attention. And that was because as a New York state assemblyman, he had sponsored a number of bills that sought to rein in the industry.