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 Celebration’s Fall 2025 Conference and Management Summit. A few of the periods on the three-day occasion targeted on synthetic intelligence, offering a peek at how the get together 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 expertise as shortly as doable or threat getting walloped by Democratic opponents who use AI.

“AI’s simply this type of new expertise, and I don’t wanna see conservatives be gradual to undertake it, like we’ve finished a lot earlier than. That’s why it’s so necessary for us,” Lowder informed the viewers.

In 2008, presidential hopeful Barack Obama promised to announce his VP candidate (Joe Biden) through textual content, which allowed his marketing campaign to gather an enormous variety of cellphone 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 informed the viewers to think about AI as “tremendous interns.” He mentioned that AI makes errors, and it’s necessary 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 informed 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 area.

Lowder additionally confused that you can actually get some attention-grabbing concepts by prompting instruments like ChatGPT to fake as if it have 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 at some point, individuals 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 informed the viewers about completely different sorts of AI instruments they may use past ChatGPT, together with Grok, which he famous was run by Elon Musk, “so it’s a little bit bit loopy and wild-eyed, and likewise lots of enjoyable.” He informed the viewers that his favourite instruments have been Perplexity, due to the way it cited sources, and NotebookLM, due to the customization choices.

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

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

Lowder mentioned that AI might make individuals nervous as a result of they contemplate it creepy, particularly given the way it’s now being portrayed in fashionable 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 maintain 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” nevertheless it 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 would like my candidate to say we’re right here to dominate that.’ You understand, Trump can say that, however possibly not everyone, proper?” Lowder mentioned, to amusing from the viewers.

Despite the fact that Lowder is clearly all-in on Trump and Trumpism, it was attention-grabbing to listen to him discuss in what could be thought of extra old-school Republican language. When Lowder was requested concerning the biases which may be current within the main AI chatbots, he talked concerning 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 large tech corporations simply wish to make a product that works as they search to dominate the house.

The issue with so many AI chatbots, as Lowder sees it, is that they’re educated on the web, which apparently has a liberal bias. “I might guess it in all probability leans left. The fact is all these fashions have been educated 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 lately, as he gobbles up 10% of Intel.

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

Throughout 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 really used AI to take away any tattoos from her personal marketing campaign mailers. Which 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 information at instances, together with when he advised 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, a protracted hyphen.

“All of us chortle at one another after we can see someone ship us an e mail or a leftist candidate places a quote in that we will inform is generated by GPT,” Lowder informed the viewers. “You understand how one can inform it’s GPT? GPT loves actually large hyphens. So in the event you see actually large hyphens, they usually use them loads, it’s undoubtedly 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 check with them on social media as “millennial em dashes” for a purpose. The truth is, President Donald Trump typically makes use of em dashes in his Truth Social posts. However that’s not as a result of Trump is utilizing AI. It’s nearly actually as a result of Trump typically 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 seemingly clarification is that his millennial assistant is simply exhibiting her love for millennial em dashes.

Lowder clearly believes that AI is a strong software. And any Republican who resists embracing platforms like Perplexity, ChatGPT, and NotebookLM is certain 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 expertise as a result of if we don’t, there’s gonna be penalties, proper?” Lowder mentioned. “It’s not going wherever.”

And nevertheless you’re feeling about AI personally, Lowder’s perspective is one shared by nearly each political operative throughout the spectrum proper now. You might like AI, you might hate it. However even when the AI bubble have been to burst tomorrow, it actually appears like a expertise that shall be round in some type for a few years to return. The query is simply how Lowder and his opponents determine to get with it.