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 Occasion’s Fall 2025 Conference and Management Summit. A few of the classes on the three-day occasion targeted on synthetic intelligence, offering a peek at how the celebration 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 known as the Management Institute, gave well-attended talks on the conference about how Republicans ought to use AI in a quickly evolving atmosphere. Lowder’s talks emphasised the necessity for conservatives to embrace new know-how as rapidly as potential 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 gradual to undertake it, like we’ve accomplished 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) by way of textual content, which allowed his marketing campaign to gather a large variety of cellphone numbers from individuals who wished 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 type of worry 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 consider AI as “tremendous interns.” He stated that AI makes errors, and it’s necessary to not simply use regardless of the AI produces as a last product. And he repeatedly reminded the viewers that AI will simply make issues up and produce errors. It was a device, 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 burdened that you might actually get some attention-grabbing concepts by prompting instruments like ChatGPT to faux as if it have been a conservative operative, utilizing that actual type 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 sooner or later, 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 totally 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 in addition plenty 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 beneficial 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 probably the most inexperienced conference attendees appeared to know that.

One man from the viewers requested if he might ask ChatGPT about any secret info which 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 stated that AI might make individuals nervous as a result of they think about 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 wished 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 preserve 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 already know, Trump can say that, however perhaps not everyone, proper?” Lowder stated, to fun from the viewers.

Although Lowder is clearly all-in on Trump and Trumpism, it was attention-grabbing to listen to him speak in what may 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 massive tech firms simply wish 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 educated on the web, which apparently has a liberal bias. “I might guess it in all probability leans left. The truth is all these fashions have been educated mainly on the web, proper? And the web leans left,” Lowder stated. However he insisted that the free market would kind all of it out. That’s not fairly how Trump sees the world as of late, as he gobbles up 10% of Intel.

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

Throughout the 2024 race, Metal misplaced to her opponent, Democrat Derek Tran, by an especially 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 significantly bizarre. But it surely’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 in opposition to 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 boundaries of his data at occasions, together with when he prompt that he might inform when one thing was written by AI simply because it used an em sprint. Or, as he known as it, an extended hyphen.

“All of us chuckle at one another after we can see any individual 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 already know how one can inform it’s GPT? GPT loves actually massive hyphens. So in the event you see actually massive hyphens, and so they use them so much, it’s positively a GPT factor, I assure you.”

Once more, they’re known as em dashes. And the explanation 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 discuss with them on social media as “millennial em dashes” for a cause. 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 definitely as a result of Trump typically dictates his posts to an individual, and through the 2024 presidential marketing campaign, that individual was Natalie Harp, his 34-year-old assistant. Is it potential that Trump makes use of AI? Positive. 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 device. 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 have now to recover from that nervousness and we have now to interact with the know-how as a result of if we don’t, there’s gonna be penalties, proper?” Lowder stated. “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 know-how that will likely 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.