Artificial Intelligence in Election Campaigns: Perceptions, Penalties, and Implications

As political parties around the world experiment with Artificial Intelligence (AI) in election campaigns, concerns about deception and manipulation are rising. This article examines how the public reacts to different uses of AI in elections and the potential consequences for party evaluations and regulatory preferences. Across three preregistered studies with over 7600 American respondents, we identify three categories of AI use: campaign operations, voter outreach, and deception. While people generally dislike AI in campaigns, they are especially critical of deceptive uses, which they perceive as norm violations. However, parties engaging in AI-enabled deception face no significant drop in favorability, neither with supporters, opponents, nor independents. Instead, deceptive AI use increases public support for stricter AI regulation, including calls for an outright ban on AI development. These findings indicate that public disapproval of deceptive uses of AI does not directly translate into incentives for parties to forgo them, at least in the polarized political environment of the US.