New campaign finance disclosure data indicates that US political campaigns have spent at least $17 million on AI technology vendors since 2020. This spending, tracked across 523 federal candidates and campaigns, suggests AI is rapidly becoming an essential tool in politics.
Candidates, parties, and committees are reportedly quiet about their use of AI, a sensitive issue that has been closely monitored. A September 2025 Pew survey found that over 70% of Americans would think less of a candidate who used AI to help write a speech.
Among general-purpose AI vendors, at least 80 federal campaigns and committees have reported spending with OpenAI since 2024, totalling around $50,000. OpenAI's competitor, Anthropic, has seen at least 65 candidates or committees paying for its Claude software in 2026, with a nearly two-to-one Democrat-to-Republican ratio. Elon Musk's xAI, in contrast, primarily serves Republican interests, with approximately $5,000 in reported spending from seven federal and two state-level entities.
More significant spending goes to vendors specialising in political campaign applications of AI. AmplifAI, which provides automated text messaging, received $4.7 million in campaign spending in the 2022 cycle. Daisychain, a rising Democratic solution for AI-powered text messaging, has garnered about $300,000 in reported candidate spend in the 2026 cycle. On the Republican side, Campaign Nucleus, an AI-powered voter engagement tool, has attracted six-figure spending from the Republican National Committee and other aligned groups.
At the state level, across four studied states, at least $92,000 has been spent on modern generative AI vendors since 2022, spread across at least 108 candidates and committees. This spending has grown substantially, with 2026 seeing approximately ten times the amount reported in all of 2024. Daisychain, OpenAI, and Claude are prominent at this level, alongside DonorAtlas, an AI-powered prospect research tool.
Despite media attention, few candidates appear to be reporting spending on AI tools specifically designed for synthetic audio and video, known as "deepfakes." Only six federal candidates or committees reported spending on ElevenLabs, an AI audio generator, totalling about $1,400, and five reported users for the AI image generator Midjourney, with approximately $1,600 in spending.