What I learned about AI's PR crisis from bingeing 130 political TV ads

• Artificial intelligence is the new boogeyman in political campaign ads.
• Both Democrats and Republicans want to own the issue and use it to undermine their opponents.
• The biggest argument they're driving home: AI is burning a hole in voters' wallets.

Political candidates are attacking AI in ads, and they're focusing on the one thing scarier than a killer robot: a high electricity bill.

Republicans, Democrats, and Independents are peddling anti-AI messaging this year, with subtle differences. The attacks pose a challenge for AI companies looking to build political support for data centers and other infrastructure projects.

Business Insider reviewed 130 US political TV ads that mentioned artificial intelligence or data centers. More than AI safety or other hot-button tech issues, campaigns are mostly making noise about AI's costs, per our review of Senate, House, and gubernatorial campaign ads aired between January 2025 and last week, compiled by the ad intelligence firm AdImpact.

Data centers are "draining our water, driving up our power bills, threatening our way of life," Fred Simon, a Republican candidate who ran in the June 9 primary for Nevada's 2nd District, said in one ad.

All of the anti-AI political ads we reviewed aired in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas, where data centers operate, are under construction, or have been proposed. Beyond electricity price increases, the ads criticized corporate or "billionaire" tax breaks for AI infrastructure, as well as water and land use.

"A number of candidates are linking data center concerns to broader affordability issues," said Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a public policy and governance think tank. "That makes the combination much more potent."

No party owns AI as a wedge issue

AI, as a political talking point, is still up for grabs. Neither Democrats nor Republicans have found a way to turn it into a wedge issue that they own.

About 37% of the candidates represented in AdImpact's dataset were Republicans, while 47% were Democrats and 16% were Independents.

The candidates' messaging often overlapped in Business Insider's review of TV ads. Regardless of party, the politicians often criticized increased electricity costs for voters, attacked incumbents who had supported data-center tax breaks, and said that AI had served corporate or billionaire interests.

"Big Tech billionaires are coming for Wyoming. They want massive data centers, more control over our land, our water, and our way of life," Republican candidate Chuck Gray said in a TV spot that aired around 670 times.

Blaming the wealthy serves as a "double whammy" for politicians who want to attack AI, said Michael Franz, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project.

"Not only can you tie data centers to increasing costs, especially around energy costs, but you can also whack big elite interests at the same time," he said.

Republicans and Democrats do diverge slightly in the language they use to criticize AI's use of resources, Franz said.

Democrats are more likely to talk about data centers' effect on the environment from a conservation angle, while Republicans have brought up how the facilities take over private property or eat up farmland, he said.

Democrats also have at least one messaging advantage when it comes to AI: they don't need to defend the positions of the Trump administration, which has pushed back on Americans' AI concerns and recently launched a meme campaign to combat AI doomerism.

"Trump keeps telling people everything's OK, and there's nothing to worry about," West said. "People are worried about data centers, and they're concerned about AI taking jobs. The president can huff and puff all he wants. It's not changing public worries."

AI is making a 'mess'

AI infrastructure has quickly become a symbol of Big Tech overreach, and like Flock cameras, it's facing grassroots backlash.

Sixty-one percent of likely US voters oppose constructing data centers to support AI, according to a September poll from The New York Times and Siena University. About half of US adults are more "concerned than excited" about rising AI use in daily life, according to a June survey from the Pew Research Center.

Campaigns are trying to lock into those concerns in their 15- or 30-second TV spots.

"Big companies have come before, taken what they wanted, and left us with their mess to clean up. Now it's data centers," Paige Cognetti, a Democratic candidate for Pennsylvania's 8th district, said in an ad that aired around 400 times.

AI's salience in this election cycle is showing up across the campaign trail as governors in states like Pennsylvania and Texas flip from supporting data-center construction to delaying or blocking the facilities. It could become a much more influential political issue in the coming years if the technology ends up displacing jobs or harming society in other ways, as doomsayers warn.

"Data centers are a local issue, but the concerns have popped up in so many communities," West said. "People are worried about data centers whether they have one in their neighborhood or not."

While almost every TV spot we viewed was anti-AI, Business Insider did find one ad in the dataset that spoke positively about the tech.

It came from an AI-focused super PAC called Public First Action, backed by Anthropic, which supported Republican Tom Cotton in the Arkansas Senate race.

"American genius and resolve mean AI's future will be made right here," the ad, which aired around 1,100 times, said. "It's more important than ever that our chips don't fall into the wrong hands. Senator Tom Cotton is making sure of it."

Jobs, deepfakes, and other ways politicians talk about AI

Not all of the AI or data center discourse has centered on costs or resource usage. Business Insider found a slew of other themes that came up in political spots, including:

• AI safety: Candidates like Republican Congressman Abe Hamadeh talked about "common sense safeguards to keep the most dangerous AI away from terrorists."
• AI deepfakes: Some candidates complained about being AI deepfaked by opponents, accusing them of lying or mud-slinging. One AI-generated attack ad targeting Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed disclosed that it was "created in whole or in part with the use of artificial intelligence."
• AI taking jobs: Several campaigns brought up AI-related job losses in ads. Montana House Republican candidate Aaron Flint pledged to "create high-paying jobs that China can't steal, and AI can't replace" in an ad that aired about 1,180 times.
• Environmental impact: While water or land usage were common complaints in ads, some politicians spoke more broadly about AI's environmental effects. "Big Tech's invading Ohio, driving up our electric rates, damaging our environment, destroying our farmland," the campaign for Ohio Democrat Marcy Kaptur said in an ad that aired about 1,260 times.

Beyond TV ads, campaigns are bringing their anti-data center messaging online via Meta and YouTube ads, according to an analysis of digital-ad spend from Tom Egan, founder of the public-affairs firm Absecon Group.

Over 700 campaigns posted about data centers in digital ads this year, and 99.7% of ad spend has gone to critical messaging, Egan said.

"There's no other topic that everyone's talking about the way that they are about data centers," he said. "Voters across the country have concerns about AI, and the most tangible visualization of that is data centers being built."