Politics
AI-Powered Emails Are Influencing Politics on Hot-Button Issues
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AI-Powered Emails Are Influencing Politics on Hot-Button Issues From California to North Carolina, officials weighing policy changes are being inundated with comments via platforms that tout AI capabilities. Two weeks before the board of a Southern California environmental agency was to vote on a pair of landmark climate initiatives last May, staff raised an alarm. “An aggressive campaign” from an “AI powered platform,” they told executives, was flooding their servers with thousands of...
AI-Powered Emails Are Influencing Politics on Hot-Button Issues
From California to North Carolina, officials weighing policy changes are being inundated with comments via platforms that tout AI capabilities.
Two weeks before the board of a Southern California environmental agency was to vote on a pair of landmark climate initiatives last May, staff raised an alarm. “An aggressive campaign” from an “AI powered platform,” they told executives, was flooding their servers with thousands of emails from the public opposing the proposals to phase out gas water heaters and furnaces in nearly half the state’s homes.
Officials at the South Coast Air Quality Management District scrambled to figure out who was behind the deluge — and if the emails were genuine, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg News in a public records request.
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