Welcome to the forefront of conversational AI as we explore the fascinating world of AI chatbots in our dedicated blog series. Discover the latest advancements, applications, and strategies that propel the evolution of chatbot technology. From enhancing customer interactions to streamlining business processes, these articles delve into the innovative ways artificial intelligence is shaping the landscape of automated conversational agents. Whether you’re a business owner, developer, or simply intrigued by the future of interactive technology, join us on this journey to unravel the transformative power and endless possibilities of AI chatbots.
Candidates in the final stretch of the U.S. midterm campaign are no longer writing only for voters. They are writing for the chatbots those voters consult, structuring online material so that models such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini name them when asked who is best on taxes, housing or public safety.
A strategy deck prepared for Mike Minogue, the Republican challenging Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey, lays out the approach in detail, according to Reuters. It proposed flooding sites that chatbots frequently cite with hundreds of policy explainers, pushing related material onto YouTube and Reddit, and then repeatedly testing how the major models answer questions on the issues that decide the race. Where a candidate’s positions failed to surface, the material would be rewritten and the cycle repeated.
The practice has a name in the industry: generative engine optimization, or GEO, a descendant of the search engine optimization that campaigns used to climb Google rankings. Its premise is that a campaign can shape the information environment by feeding the web and AI assistants more of its own data, which in turn colors how a candidate is described, compared and recommended.
“If you don’t put the right information up, you don’t know what information AI will use,” said Thomas Howell, chief executive of Visient, the firm that drafted the Minogue proposal. The campaign did not respond to a request for comment, and it is unclear how much of the plan has been carried out.
The spending can be substantial. Visient said political work starts at $5,000 a month and can climb to $50,000 a month when paid content placement or influencer outreach is included. The firm’s software is listed at $134 a month, rising to as much as $9,000 a month for larger clients that need editorial design and development.
Why campaigns are paying: voters are asking. Cameron Hickey, chief executive of the National Conference on Citizenship, said about 25% of voters have queried a chatbot about candidates while deciding how to cast a ballot. Visient’s own materials argue that campaign teams must now compete to become the “recommended candidate in AI answers.”
A parallel industry has grown up around measuring and managing that recommendation. New York-based CampSight, which leans progressive, tells clients what chatbots are saying about a candidate and advises on how to respond. Joe Bonilla, managing partner at creative strategy firm Relentless Awareness, said the tactic of training AI is already real and predicted it would become standard by the 2028 presidential cycle.
Note: Fee figures from Visient; voter share from the National Conference on Citizenship.
The push raises a question the campaigns have not answered: whether the answers voters receive are trustworthy. Meg Schwenzfeier of COKUS AI, which tracks how voters use artificial intelligence, said the technology is only at the threshold of a new era and that this year’s focus has been on getting candidates’ own websites to appear in chatbot results. She warned that chatbots reply in a confident tone while also absorbing unverified information, leaving users exposed to misinformation.
The shift mirrors an earlier transition. When the internet arrived, campaigns learned to optimize for search rankings; now the intermediary is a model that synthesizes sources rather than listing them. For investors and technology firms, the development marks another channel through which AI platforms influence public discourse and another front in the debate over how those platforms should be governed during elections.
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