WaPo: 39 Campaigns Paid OpenAI Despite Its Political-Ad Ban

A Washington Post review of federal campaign-finance filings identified 39 congressional candidates who reported paying for OpenAI subscriptions this cycle. Two of them disclosed in filings that they used the subscription for advertising, a use OpenAI's policies forbid. Around 30 political action committees and parties also reported payments to the company, with the Republican National Committee ranking as its largest political spender at roughly $9,700; Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) has logged about $3,260 in OpenAI charges since 2025.

"For the most part, people are using it to write their emails, write their ad copy, write their scripts," Republican digital strategist Eric Wilson told the paper.

The Post's own testing suggested the ban is applied unevenly: ChatGPT sometimes declined to draft targeted demographic messages or voter emails, then complied with identical prompts the same day. Consultants told the paper that undisclosed use is far larger than what appears in FEC records, since a $20-a-month ChatGPT Plus subscription is easy to expense under vague categories.

As the Post frames it, AI "has subtly entered the machinery of the 2026 midterms" "despite limits imposed by leading AI companies to protect elections from the technology's risks." The story arrives alongside a stream of OpenAI-focused political items we've been tracking this week, from a proposed Stop Rogue AI Act to Vance's remarks calling some AI "sort of satanic" on a Christian podcast.