How Republicans Plan to Use AI for 2026 (Even If It is Too Woke)

Conservatives in California descended on Orange County over the weekend for the Republican Get together’s Fall 2025 Conference and Management Summit. A few of the classes on the three-day occasion centered on synthetic intelligence, offering a peek at how the social gathering of Donald Trump plans to make use of AI within the 2026 midterm elections and past.

Brent Lowder, the California director of a right-wing nonprofit referred to as the Management Institute, gave well-attended talks on the conference about how Republicans ought to use AI in a quickly evolving setting. Lowder’s talks emphasised the necessity for conservatives to embrace new know-how as shortly as doable or danger getting walloped by Democratic opponents who use AI.

“AI’s simply this sort of new know-how, and I don’t wanna see conservatives be sluggish to undertake it, like we’ve achieved a lot earlier than. That’s why it’s so vital for us,” Lowder instructed the viewers.

In 2008, presidential hopeful Barack Obama promised to announce his VP candidate (Joe Biden) by way of textual content, which allowed his marketing campaign to gather an enormous variety of telephone numbers from individuals who needed to be the primary to know. And in 2012, President Obama’s marketing campaign embraced social media in ways in which his competitor, Mitt Romney, didn’t.

The 51-year-old Lowder, who beforehand ran a political motion committee that helped elect Trump to his first time period in 2016, understands Republicans can’t get caught flat-footed technologically.

That form of concern about lacking out appeared to drive a lot of the dialogue. However Lowder additionally touted the elevated effectivity he noticed in utilizing AI. Lowder instructed the viewers to think about AI as “tremendous interns.” He mentioned that AI makes errors, and it’s vital to not simply use regardless of the AI produces as a ultimate product. And he repeatedly reminded the viewers that AI will simply make issues up and produce errors. It was a software, he instructed the crowds. And it was attention-grabbing to listen to him downplay the capabilities whereas remaining optimistic, a distinction to the hype of AI CEOs who insist instruments like ChatGPT are like having PhD experts in any discipline.

Lowder additionally burdened that you may actually get some attention-grabbing concepts by prompting instruments like ChatGPT to faux as if it had been a conservative operative, utilizing that precise form of wording when asking for an evaluation of ballot outcomes.

Lowder performed movies of Steve Jobs giving a speech at Leeds College in 1985 that appear extremely prescient 40 years later. Jobs predicted that someday, folks may be capable to have a dialog with Aristotle. The viewers was audibly impressed by the late Apple co-founder’s predictions, immediately making the connection to instruments like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Lowder instructed the viewers about completely different sorts of AI instruments they might use past ChatGPT, together with Grok, which he famous was run by Elon Musk, “so it’s somewhat bit loopy and wild-eyed, and in addition a number of enjoyable.” He instructed the viewers that his favourite instruments had been Perplexity, due to the way it cited sources, and NotebookLM, due to the customization choices.

He additionally beneficial that anybody who wanted to make use of delicate paperwork obtain one thing like Jan.ai to run a mannequin regionally. Privateness can clearly be a serious concern for political campaigns, and even essentially the most inexperienced conference attendees appeared to know that.

One man from the viewers requested if he might ask ChatGPT about any secret info that will have been uploaded by Democrats. Lowder instructed him that wasn’t going to work, however famous that Republicans shouldn’t add something delicate.

Lowder mentioned that AI might make folks nervous as a result of they contemplate it creepy, particularly given the way it’s now being portrayed in well-liked media. And whereas he understood the place that unease was coming from, it was important for the conservative motion to embrace it in the event that they needed to win elections.

Lowder had AI write some social media posts, producing bullet factors about innovation and the free market. One of many examples that got here again was, “Let’s hold these incentives flowing to observe innovation because it transforms our world.” Lowder then confirmed how he requested the bot to punch up the language to make it “shorter” and extra “edgy” but it surely spit out one thing that was too excessive: “We’re right here to dominate, innovate, and conquer within the free market. Within the free market jungle.”

“So I used to be like, ‘Eh, I don’t know if I need my candidate to say we’re right here to dominate that.’ You understand, Trump can say that, however possibly not all people, proper?” Lowder mentioned, to fun from the viewers.

Regardless that Lowder is clearly all-in on Trump and Trumpism, it was attention-grabbing to listen to him discuss in what may be thought of extra old-school Republican language. When Lowder was requested in regards to the biases which may be current within the main AI chatbots, he talked in regards to the infamous instance when Google’s Gemini generated images of American founding fathers as Black in early 2024. However Lowder was fast to notice that the entire huge tech corporations simply need to make a product that works as they search to dominate the area.

The issue with so many AI chatbots, as Lowder sees it, is that they’re skilled on the web, which apparently has a liberal bias. “I might guess it most likely leans left. The fact is all these fashions had been skilled mainly on the web, proper? And the web leans left,” Lowder mentioned. However he insisted that the free market would kind all of it out. That’s not fairly how Trump sees the world today, as he gobbles up 10% of Intel.

Lowder additionally confirmed off how AI picture instruments might be used to scrub up marketing campaign images, utilizing a failed native politician, former Republican Rep. Michelle Metal, for instance in his slides. Lowder mentioned that should you took a photograph for a marketing campaign and needed to take away a tattoo, that was one thing AI might aid you with, displaying the viewers earlier than and after pictures of the “undesirable tattoo.”

Through the 2024 race, Metal misplaced to her opponent, Democrat Derek Tran, by a particularly shut margin in Orange County. How shut? Simply 653 votes. Metal had in contrast Tran to Mao Zedong and used hammer and sickle imagery in mailers. Tran is the son of Vietnamese refugees who fled the Communist nation, making her assault notably bizarre. Nevertheless it’s unclear if she truly used AI to take away any tattoos from her personal marketing campaign mailers. That will have simply been a hypothetical on Lowder’s half, who insisted he didn’t even have something towards tattoos.

Lowder got here throughout as educated and cheap when it got here to the probabilities and limits of AI, however he did present the bounds of his data at occasions, together with when he recommended that he might inform when one thing was written by AI simply because it used an em sprint. Or, as he referred to as it, an extended hyphen.

“All of us chuckle at one another after we can see any individual ship us an electronic mail or a leftist candidate places a quote in that we are able to inform is generated by GPT,” Lowder instructed the viewers. “You understand how one can inform it’s GPT? GPT loves actually huge hyphens. So should you see actually huge hyphens, they usually use them loads, it’s positively a GPT factor, I assure you.”

Once more, they’re referred to as em dashes. And the rationale that AI chatbots like to make use of em dashes is as a result of 30- and 40-somethings love to make use of em dashes. Folks jokingly consult with them on social media as “millennial em dashes” for a motive. In reality, President Donald Trump generally makes use of em dashes in his Truth Social posts. However that’s not as a result of Trump is utilizing AI. It’s virtually actually as a result of Trump usually dictates his posts to an individual, and through the 2024 presidential marketing campaign, that particular person was Natalie Harp, his 34-year-old assistant. Is it doable that Trump makes use of AI? Certain. However the extra probably rationalization is that his millennial assistant is simply displaying her love for millennial em dashes.

Lowder clearly believes that AI is a robust software. And any Republican who resists embracing platforms like Perplexity, ChatGPT, and NotebookLM is sure to be left within the mud.

“The underside line is we’ve to recover from that nervousness and we’ve to have interaction with the know-how as a result of if we don’t, there’s gonna be penalties, proper?” Lowder mentioned. “It’s not going wherever.”

And nevertheless you are feeling about AI personally, Lowder’s perspective is one shared by nearly each political operative throughout the spectrum proper now. It’s possible you’ll like AI, chances are you’ll hate it. However even when the AI bubble had been to burst tomorrow, it actually seems like a know-how that can be round in some type for a few years to return. The query is simply how Lowder and his opponents resolve to get with it.