Louis DeSipio and Michael Tesler
  • February 11, 2026

  • Michael Tesler and Louis DeSipio, political science, OC Register, Feb. 11, 2026

    • -----

UC Irvine political scientists Michael Tesler and Louis DeSipio provide expert electoral insight on the use of AI in political campaigns in this interview with OC Register reporter Kaitlyn Schallhorn. Excerpt from the Register:

-----

That sort of utilization of AI is what concerns Michael Tesler, an expert on campaigns and elections who teaches political science at UC Irvine.

Especially as it is becoming more difficult to decipher what is obviously false and what could plausibly be real.

“That fuels all the bad stuff in terms of distrusting and disliking the other side even more than we already do,” said Tesler.

“I think that is very likely to continue unless there are some costs for doing so,” he said. “And I don’t see, in this environment, the political cost, who is going to be the one to speak with a definitive voice to say, ‘This is not true,’ and, ‘This is not appropriate.’ I just don’t think that voice exists, and that makes this very difficult to combat.”

But Tesler is encouraged by models like Civiq that use AI for good.

Noting that the practice of microtargeting — using online data to target specific voters or potential voters — has had its flaws, Tesler said AI might enhance the algorithm for campaigns to determine what voters actually care about.

“To the extent that microtargeting improves because of AI, that should be a real benefit for campaigns in terms of mobilization to get people out to vote,” Tesler said.

It could also help civic-minded individuals who are considering running in a hyper-local contest, such as for a school board seat or city council, said Louis DeSipio, an expert in electoral politics who also teaches at UCI.

“That’s a big commitment,” said DeSipio, especially considering races at the local level aren’t typically manned by high-powered campaign consultants.

“The AI could help you make some decisions early on if you want to get into the race,” he added. “If you don’t know your district well enough six months in, when you’ve been running every weekend, you still don’t know where to allocate your time and your resources — that will come through to voters. This is a front-end tech that could help people make these decisions.”

But DeSipio is also concerned about deepfakes, particularly as the technology gets “smarter” and defects we had been trained to look out for — AI-generated images or videos could produce an extra finger or an impossibly bent arm, for example — are becoming less prevalent.

He’s worried, too, about campaigns’ potential weaponization of AI to deny the outcome of an election.

“The denialism we’ve seen at the national level and some state races, AI will contribute to that because it can find some anomaly that would be easy to explain but could be used by a campaign to say, ‘Hey, there is a malfeasance’ in the election,” DeSipio said.

If there is a positive with AI in elections, Tesler said, “perhaps it’s mobilizing people around issues they care most about.”

“I tend to think the mobilization aspect is good, but the misinformation standpoint is really terrifying,” said Tesler.

-----

For the full story, please visit https://www.ocregister.com/2026/02/11/new-california-platform-uses-ai-to-help-campaigns-better-reach-voters/.  

 

Related News Items

Archive

Connect with us: