AI Slop Isn't the Story. Cheap Momentum Is.

Bill Scher of the Washington Monthly recently took aim at the AI-generated videos being produced by Spencer Pratt’s mayoral campaign, dismissing them as “AI slop” and ineffective.

Maybe.

But I think the criticism misses something important about modern campaigns. The assumption behind Scher’s argument is that these videos are supposed to persuade voters. If they aren’t persuasive, then they’re failures. That’s a reasonable conclusion if persuasion was the objective.

I’m not convinced it was.

Every summer NFL teams release schedule videos. College football programs do the same thing. Some spend hundreds of thousands of dollars producing elaborate hype videos announcing games everyone already knows are on the schedule.

Nobody thinks those videos are intended to create new fans.

The Las Vegas Raiders don’t release a schedule video hoping a lifelong Chiefs fan suddenly sees the light and buys a silver-and-black jersey. If that were the objective, the campaign would be a spectacular failure. There are easier ways to convert people. Most of them involve head injuries.

The purpose of those videos is entirely different.

They remind existing supporters that the season is coming. They create excitement. They generate conversation. They encourage fans to buy tickets, purchase merchandise, plan road trips, and tell everyone around them that this is finally “the year”.

In short, they’re activation tools. Politics has the exact same dynamic.

Campaigns spend a lot of time trying to persuade voters, but before they can persuade anyone, they need resources. They need donors. They need volunteers. They need activists. They need people willing to share content, make phone calls, send text messages, knock doors, and drag reluctant friends to the polls.

Those people are not persuaded into existence by a thirty-second television ad.

They’re activated.

That’s where a lot of political observers get confused. They see an unconventional video and immediately evaluate it using persuasion standards. Would this convince an undecided voter? Would this change someone’s position on taxes? Would this move suburban swing voters?

Sometimes that’s the wrong question. Many campaign videos aren’t aimed at undecided voters at all. They’re aimed at supporters. Their purpose is to generate energy, attract attention, and create momentum.

Momentum matters because campaigns are expensive. Before a campaign can launch a major persuasion effort, it needs the money to pay for it. Every consultant understands this, even if we don’t always say it out loud. Fundraising is not separate from persuasion. Fundraising finances persuasion.

For most of political history, creating promotional content required real money. Cameras, production crews, editors, graphics, travel, and a long approval process meant campaigns had to be selective about what they produced. (In 2000, while I was serving as a campaign manager for the first time, I literally drove to the airport to get a VHS tape of the ad, took it back to HQ to review with the candidate, then we would call our media consultant to make edits.)

Now a campaign can generate content in hours instead of weeks.

A candidate can respond to breaking news before the television stations have finished editing their sound bites. A campaign can test ten ideas instead of one. Supporters can be directed to donate, call legislators, post on social media, attend events, or simply engage with the campaign while an issue is still hot.

The real advantage isn’t that AI makes better persuasion ads. The advantage is that it makes activation and promotion faster and cheaper.

Some of that content will be terrible. Some of it will deserve ridicule. Some of it will be every bit as ridiculous as critics claim. The question isn’t whether an AI-generated video deserves an award at a political consultant conference. The question is whether it accomplished its objective.

Did people watch it?

Did they share it?

Did they donate?

Did they volunteer?

Did they engage?

Did they take action?

Those are the metrics that matter.

The smartest campaigns will understand that persuasion and promotion are different disciplines serving different purposes. They’ll use traditional advertising to change minds and rapid-response AI content to create energy, maintain engagement, and mobilize supporters. The campaigns that understand the difference will have a significant advantage. The campaigns that don’t will spend the next few years arguing about whether something is “AI slop” while their opponents are busy building momentum.

P.S. Speaking of “AI slop”; after high school I joined the Marines and did not attend college, so my ability to spell and write is a lot less proficient than my ability to lay down suppressing fire with a crew-served machine gun. I routinely and unabashedly use AI to organize my random thoughts and observations and translate them into something people might actually read.

Chris Faulkner, a United States Marine Corps veteran (1991–2001), serves as a Senior Advisor at Connector, Inc. where he leans on nearly three decades of winning campaigns to advise our clients on their political efforts and goals. He and his wife, Angela, live outside Knoxville, Tennessee with their poodle and pit bull, and are proud parents of three adult sons.