ICYMI: Embracing AI in Congressional Communications

Highlights from AI 101: A Comms Staffer’s Beginner’s Guide to AI

POPVOX Foundation and R Street Institute recently hosted an introductory discussion on the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the workflows of Congressional communications staff. The event included an overview of current institutional guidance and featured insights from communications experts. Here’s what you need to know if you missed this enlightening discussion.

AI as a Congressional Capacity Builder

Aubrey Wilson, Director of Government Innovation at POPVOX Foundation, set the stage that AI technology may not be as new as it seems, with its long-standing presence as text prediction on phones to Netflix recommendations. However, generative AI (GenAI) is new, and this emerging technology is capable of generating new text from a diverse and overwhelmingly large collection of sources. OpenAI’s ChatGPT is one of the most well known examples of GenAI, and as the only currently authorized private large language model (LLM) approved for Congressional use. It provides comms teams with a valuable new tool that can boost creativity, cut down on drafting time, and streamline additional day-to-day functions.

Institutional Guidelines and Best Practices

Aubrey discussed the House's internal policies on AI use. ChatGPT4 Plus is the only authorized LLM for use in the House at this time and it should be used in accordance with the House’s official guidance. If a communications staffer works for the Senate, that chamber has yet to issue any official AI guidance, so Aubrey encourages Senate staff to seek guidance from senior staff and leadership. One additional option available and recommended for all staff on the Hill is to start the conversation with your team about an internal office-specific AI use policy to ensure that approved use cases and best practices are clearly understood. 

Practical Applications of AI in Communications: Enhancing Creativity and Efficiency

For audience members who had not yet explored ChatGPT, Aubrey performed a quick demonstration of the tool and submitted a few sample prompts, showcasing how AI can save staff time and build capacity. 

AI can streamline some of the more mundane things that [comms staff] use to spend a lot of time on so they can focus their time where it's needed the most. …Even though your tweets will be easier to draft, you will have more time to actually get those talking points perfect for your Member’s floor speech or you'll be able to prep your Member better versus spending all of that time instead just prepping yourself to prep the Member better. 

Ian Spencer, Partner and CTO at Red Edge, illustrated AI’s help in brainstorming, such as generating bill names with clever acronyms, and advised on its use as a preliminary tool rather than a primary compositional tool. One of the unique use cases he highlighted was ChatGPT’s ability to alter the tone or delivery of a written product:

Sometimes we'll write something and it'll just come off as a bit too dry, and we'll put it in the ChatGPT and be like “Can you make this funny? Can you start it out with a joke, or can you somehow make it have more levity?” And it's an amazing dad joke machine. The jokes that it comes up with are sometimes really funny, and they’re oftentimes clever in the sense that they’re connecting two very different things that you may not have thought of. So again, with content that's really dry – it can kind of spice it up a little bit. Oftentimes they're pretty bad jokes, but it's Congress! Congress is used to bad jokes, or at the very least dad jokes.

Shoshana Weissmann, Digital Media and Policy Fellow at R Street Institute, shared how she uses AI for tasks like digital media automation and editing, underscoring its usefulness for rapid response tasks.

Editing is something that I think is really useful for comms staff in particular too, because I know from doing digital media at different organizations, just how “rapid response” it gets sometimes, and how no matter how many times you check for errors there's going to be errors. I've had really, really good luck with ChatGPT just editing stuff. I'll copy and paste into there and say “find me the errors” or it'll even give me ideas of how to better word stuff.

 The Importance of Caution, Verification, and Knowing AI’s Limitations

All presenters agreed on the necessity of double-checking AI-generated content for accuracy and appropriateness. As an evolving technology, GenAI tools need to be used with transparency and caution, and although they offer the ability to streamline tasks for comms staff, they should never be trusted as an official source, final product, or faultless assistant. Ian explained it well,

We're not expecting ChatGPT to come up with the finished product but to come up with something that we can then brainstorm off of.

[AI] can help draft initial things, but it's always worth a double or triple read of whatever it writes up. It's kind of like a junior, very entry-level research assistant where sometimes it makes sense but sometimes it makes really weird errors. So it can certainly [save] time, the same way that assigning something to an intern does, especially a well trained intern which is kind of how ChatGPT is, but it will also produce something every now and then where you'll be like “where did you get this from?”

The AI 101 for Comms Staff webinar aimed to start the conversation about how GenAI can be used by communications teams on the Hill to aid them during busy session weeks and boost their capacity over time. It provided insights into best practices, official guidance, privacy considerations, and the importance of ensuring that AI-users know both the opportunities and limitations of the tools. As AI continues to evolve, Congressional staff should take time to explore how these tools can be leveraged to enhance efficiency and creativity in their roles. In addition to this webinar, POPVOX Foundation and R Street Institute hosted a second presentation focused on AI use by legislative staff.

Stay tuned to POPVOX Foundation’s resources for ongoing discussions in the field of AI adoption on Capitol Hill.