How AI will revolutionize Political Communication
Artificial intelligence is the new hot talk of town in the world of communications. Many new tools like ChatGPT, Copy.ai, or Jasper are stunning users with their ability to write speeches or summarize complicated topics in seconds. The world of politics is no exception and we just see the tip of the iceberg on the horizon. Before we dive deeper into possibilities & challenges for the industry — let’s ask about the tool itself:
To be fair, it’s still a way to go for deeper insights, but the speed and the precise language style are really impressive. And it will have a substantial impact on many jobs in the political industry in the coming weeks and months. So what are the areas AI will be able to transform and how can you already use it for your own work? Let’s have a look:
Strategic Positioning & Campaign strategy will be fueled by AI-generated ideas and plans
The holy trinity of strategy creation, political brand building, and narrative development will experience a transformation that will maybe not completely Ai-dominated but definitely enhanced with the help of AI. Within seconds you can generate simple campaign outlines as shown below.
- AI is going to help structure strategy roadmaps, advise on strategic positioning & topics based on the demographics in your constituency.
- It will be able to analyze your election district, provide you with the needed data to plan your outreach GOTV-efforts and give advice on key activities in order to reach the relevant audiences.
- AI will help you with media planning and ad budget allocation based on target groups preferred media consumption.
- Lack of creativity in suitable formats and activities? No more. AI can provide you with concrete ideas for content formats and actions you can take to reach out to voters
Social Media Content
This is excellent news for small-budget races and political communicators that lack the money to hire a full-time social media manager or contract an agency. AI at your service!
Tools like copy.ai already offer a vast variety of suitable templates from E-Mail, to Websites, from Instagram postings to Video scripts. Of course, they are still far from perfect, but given the speed of AI learning curves, this will get better the more people use it for political purposes.
Another great live example by Bram van der Hallen here:
It can basically automate replies or come up with Tweet suggestions in various tonalities. Feel free to try for yourself (so far, only working in English).
This will bring copywriting to a new level and, in times of crisis, might offer fast help when seconds and minutes count, coming up with well-articulated responses.
Nathan E. Sanders and Bruce Schneier have written a very good opinion piece in the New York Times where they point out the problems this all can bring to our democratic process. I highly recommend it for reading. We will focus in another article on the various mid- and long-term problems that will come out of that and how policymakers can react now.
Sorry, Cicero: Political speechwriting is going to be disrupted.
The most significant disruption for any political communication professionals will be coming for speechwriters. Be it in parliament or the annual Mayors speech in front of the city legislature — most of the speeches held in politics are pretty redundant. Adapt to the audience, outline your policy objectives, and twist it here and there with a funny or emotional punchline.
We ran several tests with different settings as policy fields — the results within 5 seconds were stunning. Of course contextual data is lacking, personal narratives and stories as well. But for helping building a speech structure as well as outlining key points for making an argument — AI will certainly boost any desperate scribbling on the kitchen table the night before an important political speech.
Once more templates, context and local data will be available — this is the most profound way AI will already help today building a case for an argument or outlining speeches. This is going to be especially helpful to city councillors, mayors from smaller municipalities or political activists. Try it out for yourself and see how far AI might help you in that.
Here is an example of a generative Avatar created with the help of ChatGPT and D-ID.
To cut it short: The areas of application for AI are vast, and political communication professionals should learn now what is possible and how exactly AI tools can help in boosting your day-to-day work activities. How exactly the disruption will look, it remains unclear. But of course, political communication professionals are not going to go away anytime soon — the next steps in merging human and artificial intelligence will bring new challenges as well as opportunities. However, one thing is certain: From now on, no campaign in the future can afford to run WITHOUT AI.
AI Tools you should check out for your work in Political communication:
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