In this blog series, members of our national Pathways to Politics community share practical insights into how they’re using AI in real-world political contexts, tips on where AI can be useful, lessons they’ve learned along the way, and areas where they believe caution is needed.
Ruth McGowan
Ruth McGowan is a former Mayor and author of Get Elected – a step by step campaign guide to winning public office. She is an alum of the 2017 Pathways to Politics program.
Generative AI has huge potential to assist candidates with many aspects of their campaign. It can be especially useful in minimising costs when finances are tight and for independent candidates that are trying to manage a lot with few resources.
For example a candidate (and their team) could use AI to:
- review the historical voting patterns from the Electoral Commission to inform what aspects of your campaign messages can be emphasised in different localities.
- summarise your policy documents for different audiences
- analyse your competitors’ policies and communications and develop a range of counter arguments and strategies to discuss with your team
- develop images and other visual outputs
- and lots of other uses – just ask it for help!
However, one of my concerns about candidates using AI is that it could be weaponised to attack a woman’s integrity and challenge her ‘authenticity’ – both qualities that are important for women candidates to convey to voters.
If a candidate is using AI in their campaign I suggest that you be transparent. You can normalise the use of AI but also reassure voters that human oversight is paramount, and provide confidence in the security of any personal data.
For example, something like this statement below could be useful for a candidate to have somewhere on her website. (In this case, I asked ChatGPT for inspo and added to it).
Go well with your campaign!
Our use of AI
In this campaign, we use AI carefully and responsibly to help us work more efficiently and communicate more clearly.
AI sometimes helps us with research, drafting, summarising policies, improving accessibility, and developing campaign images or visual materials such as infographics. But AI will never replace our people. Every message, policy position and campaign decision is initially developed by and then reviewed and approved by our team and of course our candidate.
We take privacy and security seriously. We do not use AI tools to process personal, confidential, or sensitive information.
We also believe in being open with our community. When we use an AI-generated image, or an image substantially created with AI, we will say so.
For Team [CANDIDATE NAME}, AI is simply a tool to help us communicate better — while human judgement, privacy and accountability remain at the centre of everything we do.
Full contributions
- Dr Josephine Okurame, AI educator and researcher
- Cr Elisha Lee, Deputy Mayor City of Monash
- Susanne Newton, former Mayor City of Darebin
- Ruth McGowan, former Mayor of Baw Baw Shire Council and author of Get Elected
- Cr Leanne Patrick, Gladstone Regional Council
- Elisa Choy, founder of Australia’s first AI-powered strategic market research company
Contributors to this series:
- Dr Josephine Okurame, AI educator and researcher:
AI as a thinking partner, tips for policy translation, interview preparation, pressure-testing ideas and fact-checking.
- Cr Elisha Lee, Deputy Mayor City of Monash:
Tips for saving time, campaign branding, good prompts, choosing the right AI tools, accuracy and accountability.
- Susanne Newton, former Mayor City of Darebin:
AI as a tool for good, importace of authenticity, insights on the impact on jobs, democracy and the environment.
- Ruth McGowan, former Mayor of Baw Baw Shire Council and author of Get Elected:
A template for AI campaign disclosure, insights on transparence and authenticity.
- Cr Leanne Patrick, Gladstone Regional Council:
Tips for improved administration, speeches and communications, meeting preparation and audience testing.
- Elisa Choy, founder of Australia’s first AI-powered strategic market research company:
Insights on the importance of human connection and using AI sparingly.
Inclusive AI Pledge
Our Founding Partner, Women’s Leadership Institute Australia (WLIA), has partnered with Champions of Change Coalition to launch the Inclusive AI Pledge, a practical initiative supporting more inclusive and equitable use of AI.
At the heart of the Pledge is the Inclusive AI Prompt, a simple, repeatable tool that helps people embed gender equality and inclusion when using tools like ChatGPT and Copilot in everyday work, from communications and policy to procurement and design.
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