Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is getting some help on the campaign trail from an unusual co-pilot: a chatbot.
Tuberville, who is running for governor and spends long stretches driving across Alabama, said Friday that he talks with an artificial intelligence voice about Medicare and Medicaid while on the road, according to a Washington Post report on AI’s growing footprint in Congress.
“It’s kind of like you can sit there and talk to an expert,” Tuberville told the newspaper. But he added, “You don’t know whether or not they’re 100 percent correct. But they put you on the right path.”
The Alabama Republican is far from alone in embracing the technology on Capitol Hill. The Senate and House over the past year have cleared staffers and members to use a range of approved chatbots — including Copilot, ChatGPT, Gemini, and, in the House, Claude — for official work, according to the report.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who has argued for an AI tax, said she uses ChatGPT to look up demographic information. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) said she personally prefers Grok, though her staffer favors Claude — and she defended her office’s use of the tools after a staff-pasted AI-generated answer found its way into the public record of the National Defense Authorization Act.
“A lot of staff will use ChatGPT, Claude, Grok,” Luna said, according to The Hill. “I personally like Grok better, but my staffer prefers Claude. I’m not gonna knock him for that. There’s nothing illegal about him doing a summary.”
The embrace of AI on Capitol Hill is visible in the spending records. A CNBC study of House disbursement records found ChatGPT remains the top paid tool used by the chamber, with Democratic offices spending three times as much as their Republican counterparts.
The Congressional Research Service, in a notification document from last April, outlined potential uses for AI across federal agencies and Congress, “including for office tasks such as creating and summarizing content, writing speeches, and drafting bills.”
But the service also flagged risks — specifically, that “confabulation or hallucination” could lead the tools to “generating and amplifying misinformation or being used to create and spread disinformation.”
Some lawmakers are trying to guard against those pitfalls. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) said she worked with her staff to develop guardrails and training for AI use, telling them to employ the tools only to “enhance and streamline” their work.
“We didn’t want to prohibit the use of the newest tools,” Slotkin said. “But we also didn’t want absolute schlock showing up in my memos.”
For Tuberville, the chatbot serves a dual purpose: research assistant and road-trip companion. As he motors between campaign stops, the voice of AI keeps him company and helps him bone up on policy areas he cares about.
The practice highlights a broader shift on Capitol Hill, where AI tools are moving from novelty to utility — even as lawmakers themselves acknowledge the technology’s imperfections.
“You don’t know whether or not they’re 100 percent correct,” Tuberville said. “But they put you on the right path.”
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2026/08/16/chatbot-does-research-and-keeps-alabama-senator-company-on-long-drives/