A lot of our attention right now is focused on how campaigns can use AI to do more with less. Every week brings a new tool that promises to speed things up, cut costs, or automate work that used to take hours.
That’s all real. And it’s all useful. But when shouldn’t we use AI? Just because you can do something with AI doesn’t mean you should.
The analogy of AI as intern is a helpful one. There are moments in a campaign where you absolutely wouldn’t bring an intern into the room.
Brainstorming
AI is excellent at remixing and summarizing what already exists. That’s exactly why it’s a poor partner for true brainstorming.
When you’re developing new ideas you don’t want something that’s backward-looking. You want friction. You want disagreement. You want intuition, taste, and lived experience.
The act of struggling through an idea is often where the insight lives. Outsourcing that struggle to AI short-circuits the process. Use AI after you have ideas to refine, stress-test, or organize them.
Communication
As AI becomes more widespread, genuine human communication is going to matter more, not less. Written communication isn’t just about transmitting information. It’s how we clarify our own thinking and build trust. When you let AI do that work for you, you’re often giving up the chance to actually form the idea yourself.
AI can be a useful editor or second set of eyes. But the words that matter most should start with you.
Creation
AI is great at producing a first draft. What it’s bad at is originating something meaningful from a blank page.
Strong creative work usually starts with a seed — a point of view, an insight, a story, or a moment. If you hand AI nothing but an empty prompt, it will fill that space with something generic. You’ll then spend your time editing around the edges instead of shaping something real.
A better workflow is to start with your own raw material. Dictate your thoughts. Jot down bullet points. Capture the idea in messy form. Then use AI to organize, expand, or polish it. When the seed is human, the output is always better.
Strategy and Judgment Calls
Campaigns are full of moments where judgment matters more than speed. Deciding what not to say. Choosing which hill to die on. Knowing when to push and when to hold back.
AI can analyze inputs, but it doesn’t understand risk, relationships, or the downstream consequences of a bad call. It can’t read the room. It doesn’t know the candidate, the district, or the personalities involved.
Sensitive or High-Stakes Work
Anything involving compliance, legal risk, internal conflict, or sensitive data deserves extra caution.
AI tools can hallucinate facts, misinterpret nuance, or confidently give you the wrong answer. That’s manageable when you’re drafting a blog post. It’s dangerous when you’re dealing with campaign finance rules, opposition research, or crisis response.
Conclusion
AI is an incredibly powerful tool for campaigns, but it works best as an assistant — not a replacement for human thinking, judgment, or creativity.
Use it to execute, organize, and accelerate work that already has direction. But when it comes to ideas, communication, strategy, and meaning, that’s still our job. The campaigns that win with AI won’t be the ones that use it everywhere. They’ll be the ones that know when not to.