AI in Message Development: A Practitioner's Guide

With the oversight of a messaging strategist, artificial intelligence can assist in the daily work of political and policy practitioners. The purpose of using one of the Big Three (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini) AI platforms for communications work is to expand creative options, particularly when it comes to finding common narratives and talking points the broad public can identify with. For this issue brief, I am looking only at political (external) communications tasks—not other political tasks, like policy development or fundraising—both topics for another day.

The Craft of Persuasive Communications

Before getting into AI’s role, it’s worth being clear about the craft of persuasive or advocacy communications aimed at the general public. The craft is tech-agnostic. The same principles—logos, pathos, ethos—that Aristotle illuminated 2,000 years ago are generally the same today. With or without AI, with or without social media, the bedrock of public communications remains constant.

And that bedrock is this.

The well-educated brain is taught to make an argument and back it up with evidence. Professions in law, medicine, science, and business demand it. But public persuasion—which is a large part of civic sector work—requires a somewhat different approach. You can’t just dump data or evidence into the public domain and expect to win people over and mobilize them. You have to tell a story. The human brain is wired for stories.

(Worth watching: Stacey Abrams, a powerhouse communicator and novelist, on the power of storytelling. Or David Axelrod over at MasterClass on campaign storytelling.)

People need a narrative to connect with—one that resonates with emotion and simplicity.

Science and medicine are notoriously bad at communicating concepts to the public. Why? They’re too data-heavy. Sally Susman, executive vice president at Pfizer, was tasked with persuading 100 million Americans during the pandemic to take a new vaccine—and do so quickly. Her book, Breakthrough, details how Pfizer broke through to the public by, as she said on a podcast, ripping up the original playbook of scientific data and expert opinions.

“I was wrong,” Susman said. “It’s stories—like ‘I got to see my grandson at his wedding.’ Real stories, real people.”

A similar course correction happened with marriage equality. The LGBTQ movement initially focused its message on the 1,000-plus legal rights and benefits that come with marriage. That wasn’t working. The movement then shifted its message to one of love, commitment, and family—using real couples and their supportive parents, grandparents, and allies in the military and business world to humanize those values. The rest, as you know, is history.

Where AI Comes Into the Picture

With that foundation in place, here’s how the new tool of AI can help execute these principles in the public arena.

Purpose 1: Translating Policy Advocacy into Public Narrative

One of AI’s most reliable strengths is linguistic translation. Policy professionals operate in a world of technical vocabulary, industry shorthand, legal qualifiers, policy speak, and nuance—language that can obscure meaning for broader audiences. AI systems are unusually effective at converting dense policy material into plain English, but only when guided with human expertise. The quality of output is directly tied to the clarity of the instruction. AI prompts framed around audience, tone, and intent—specifying the audience level, voter profile, or emotional register, for example—yield far more useful results than broad direction.

Here’s a test I ran on voting rights messaging (a topic I don’t have deep expertise in, which is why I chose it). Showing my work: below are three of ChatGPT’s responses, which I have edited. AI can’t quite get the words right, at least for my ear.

• The Fairness Story: America works because we all play by the same rules. No matter your education level, race, or where you live, all eligible voters should have the same opportunity to cast a ballot. You can’t make voting harder for some and easier for others. Fairness and consistency are essential to the American system.
• The Civic Story: The Constitution established a system where power flows from citizens, not rulers. Over generations, Americans expanded that promise—eliminating property restrictions, guaranteeing women’s suffrage, dismantling racial barriers. Safeguarding voting rights today is simply the modern expression of that same constitutional commitment: equal protection.