US campaign filings show at least $17 million in reported spending on AI vendors

US political campaigns and committees have reported at least $17 million in payments to AI technology vendors since 2020, according to a Guardian analysis published Tuesday. The figure spans 523 federal candidates and campaigns and gives voters a new view of which organizations bought AI-related services. The filings document spending, though they do not show exactly how each tool was used.

The Guardian’s Nathan Sanders and Bruce Schneier examined itemized Federal Election Commission expenditures alongside records from four states. Their analysis identifies payments to general-purpose chatbot companies as well as vendors selling services built for campaigns, including automated messaging and voter engagement. Its dollar figures are reported expenditures identified by the authors, rather than a measure of every AI activity in the election.

Chatbot purchases appear across parties

At least 80 federal campaigns and committees reported spending with OpenAI since 2024, totaling about $50,000, the Guardian found. The Republican National Committee was the largest buyer it identified, at nearly $10,000. The analysis names the campaigns of Republicans Mike Lawler, John Kennedy and Bill Cassidy, and Democrats Ro Khanna and Ted Lieu, among leading individual spenders.

Many of those OpenAI entries were described in the filings as office expenses, staff ChatGPT subscriptions or research tools, according to the Guardian. Such descriptions help identify the payments but do not establish which features staff used, what they produced or whether any material reached voters. A subscription expense should therefore be read as evidence of a purchase, rather than a record of a particular campaign message.

The Guardian also named Seth Bodnar, Jason Knapp and Mary Peltola among substantial Anthropic users. Only about 12% of the campaigns or committees reporting payments to OpenAI or Anthropic reported payments to both. xAI had a smaller disclosed footprint: seven federal and two state-level filers paid it about $5,000 in total, most of that from Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s 2024 presidential campaign.

Campaign-specific vendors account for larger sums

Payments to specialized political vendors can be much larger than chatbot subscriptions. AmplifAI, which provides automated text messaging, received $4.7 million in campaign spending in the 2022 cycle, the Guardian reported. Its analysis says reported spending on the company has since tapered. The different services and election cycles matter when comparing these figures with payments to general-purpose AI companies.

The Guardian found about $300,000 in reported candidate spending on Daisychain in the 2026 cycle, up from about $50,000 in 2024. More than half of this year’s reported candidate spending on that vendor came from Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed’s Senate campaign. The figures identify a buyer and an amount; they do not by themselves establish the content or reach of messages sent through the service.

On the Republican side, the Guardian identified Campaign Nucleus as an AI-powered voter-engagement vendor. It reported six-figure spending by the Republican National Committee and political action committees aligned with Donald Trump, plus five-figure payments by Mike Johnson, Kari Lake and other candidates. Those entries show that AI-related purchases extend beyond subscriptions to widely available chatbots.

State filings and advertising show different slices

In California, Colorado, Massachusetts and Washington, the Guardian identified at least $92,000 in spending confidently attributable to modern generative-AI vendors since 2022, spread across at least 108 candidates and committees. It said reported spending in those states during 2026 was already about ten times the amount recorded for all of 2024. That state sample is limited to four jurisdictions and should not be treated as a national state-level total.

Purchases of tools specifically associated with synthetic media were relatively scarce in the filings the Guardian reviewed. Six federal filers reported about $1,400 in spending on ElevenLabs, while five reported about $1,600 on Midjourney. Across the four states, the two firms together accounted for less than $100 in reported spending. These small vendor totals do not establish how much AI-generated material appeared in campaign advertising.

A separate measure underscores that distinction. In a September 4 report, the Wesleyan Media Project identified at least 164 political ads generated or enhanced with AI and estimated spending on those ads at just under $80 million. That is estimated spending on advertisements containing AI material, not spending on AI software. Wesleyan called its count an underestimate because some uses of AI are difficult to detect.

Wesleyan said 80% of the ads it identified, and 83% of their estimated spending, came from Republican candidates or pro-Republican groups. It also found that 69% of the ads and 78% of spending lacked an AI-use disclaimer. The project identified ads through disclosures, outside reporting and its own review, then used AdImpact estimates for spending. Those methods describe a different dataset from campaign expenditure filings.

What the filings leave unanswered

The Federal Election Commission publishes campaign-finance summaries by election cycle, filer type and reporting period, with quarterly tables in election years. Those records offer a way to trace reported payments over time. The Guardian cautioned, however, that consultants, media companies and other vendors hired by campaigns may themselves buy AI services without those purchases appearing as named AI-vendor payments in a campaign’s itemized expenses.

The newly identified transactions therefore give voters a documented floor for AI-related purchases, not a complete account of political AI use. They cannot determine whether a campaign used a chatbot for routine office work, voter contact or public messaging unless more detail is available. As additional election spending is reported, the central open question remains how much AI activity occurs through intermediaries and what campaigns actually do with the tools they buy.