Moderate women have discovered artificial intelligence, but they haven't fallen in love.
A new study from Galvanize Action, a nonpartisan group tracking the attitudes of 558 moderate white women, showed 71% had used AI chatbots, but only 19% used them several times daily or more. Compared to a February Pew Research study of all adults’ use of AI, moderate white women are more likely to have used AI but less likely to have used it frequently. Most of them, 91%, use AI to search for information.
As voters turn to chatbots to help them navigate elections, candidates have increasingly worked to ensure the summary of their campaigns AI chatbots give users is accurate, bolstering their own websites and increasing their presence on sites like Wikipedia and Ballotpedia that they think bots will pick up on. Reaching moderate white woman on AI platforms could be a make-or-break proposition for campaigns.
“Nearly half of the moderate women in our survey who use AI chatbots say they’re using them to get news—and that should get people’s attention heading into November,” Jackie Payne, the founder and executive director of Galvanize Action, told Hotline in an email. “These are not women who are deeply embedded in political media ecosystems; many say they get political news because they happen to come across it, rather than seeking it out specifically.”
Even as moderate women adopt AI into their lives, they question whether they can distinguish AI-generated content from the real thing. Forty-two percent were not confident in their ability to identify AI-generated content, 39% were “somewhat confident,” and just 20% were very or extremely confident. They’re less confident than the national average from Pew: 37% of adults were very or extremely confident they could spot AI use.
Nearly all moderate white women—91%—said they were at least somewhat concerned about AI being used to spread misinformation online.
“That’s a striking point,” Payne said. “This is an audience that is already skeptical of institutions. If you add in their concern with AI-generated misinformation and a lack of confidence in identifying what is real and what’s not, you can see how that would impact decision-making by the persuadable voters who will play a big part in deciding who controls Congress.”
—Erika Filter
