{"slug": "tommy-tuberville-brags-he-talks-to-chatgpt-as-congress-ramps-up-ai-use", "title": "Tommy Tuberville Brags He Talks to ChatGPT as Congress Ramps Up AI Use", "summary": "Members of Congress are using AI chatbots to write speeches, draft amendments, and manage constituent mail with little oversight, according to a Washington Post report. The Senate and House have cleared staffers to use ChatGPT, Microsoft's Copilot, Google's Gemini, and Claude, with the House purchasing 6,000 Copilot licenses last year. Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville said he asks ChatGPT questions about Medicare and Medicaid while driving, and one staffer fed years of phone contacts and text messages into Claude, but most staffers are unaware of the rules, which prohibit using AI for deepfakes, personnel decisions, or handling sensitive constituent data.", "body_md": "Members of Congress are outsourcing their work to artificial intelligence without much, if any, oversight or limits.\n\nStaffers and legislators are using AI chatbots to write speeches and news releases, manage mail from constituents, draft questions for congressional hearings, and even draft amendments, [ The Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/08/13/chatbots-are-doing-work-congress-with-little-oversight/) reports. The Senate and House have cleared staffers to use ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, and Google’s Gemini, with the House also approving Claude. Last year, the House bought 6,000 Copilot licenses, encouraging staffers to use them.\n\nSenators and representatives regularly use the services themselves. Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville asks ChatGPT questions about issues such as Medicare and Medicaid while driving across his home state of Alabama.\n\n“It’s kind of like you can sit there and talk to an expert,” Tuberville told the *Post*. “You don’t know whether or not they’re 100 percent correct. But they put you on the right path.”\n\nRepublican Representative Mike Flood asked a chatbot where private equity was buying single-family homes while working on a bipartisan housing bill last year. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who supports stricter regulations on tech companies, has used ChatGPT to look up demographic information.\n\nCongressional staffers aren’t clear about if there are limits on using the bots. One staffer uses Copilot to draft bill amendments, while another fed all of his phone contacts and text messages going back years into Claude and told it to build a database of reporters, including what he pitched them, what they accepted, and what went badly. Claude also runs the communications budget of that congressional office, overseeing taxpayer-funded mailers and all ads sent to constituents.\n\nThat staffer isn’t sure what congressional rules allow for AI use.\n\n“You’re still not supposed to put constituent data into AI,” he told the *Post*. “There are weird things around where the rules are. I don’t know all of them.”\n\nIn reality, Congress’s own rules are that AI can’t be used to make deepfakes, make personnel decisions, handle sensitive information such as constituent information, or finalize legislation. AI can be used to help draft a bill, but humans have the final review of it. And chatbots can be used to draft a response to a constituent, but aren’t allowed to be told who the constituent is.\n\nMost of the staffers who spoke to the *Post* said they didn’t know these rules, and enforcing them is left to staffers self-policing or reporting their colleagues. This has already caused problems, such as when Republican Representative Anna Paulina Luna proposed an amendment to a defense bill earlier this summer.\n\nOne of her staffers [included](https://newrepublic.com/post/212298/republican-congresswoman-luna-ai-national-security-bill) a summary of the proposed change with the amendment, and the first line began with “increasing example specific factors. Identical to H.R. 100 (118th Congress).11:25 AM????Claude responded:”, which was clearly lifted from a chatbot. Until rules and enforcement are tightened, incidents like this, and worse, will continue, and the public might not ever know.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/tommy-tuberville-brags-he-talks-to-chatgpt-as-congress-ramps-up-ai-use", "canonical_source": "https://newrepublic.com/post/214291/congress-ai-chatbots-write-bills-tommy-tuberville", "published_at": "2026-08-13 16:23:02+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-08-13 18:13:02.927810+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-policy", "ai-tools"], "entities": ["Tommy Tuberville", "The Washington Post", "ChatGPT", "Microsoft", "Copilot", "Google", "Gemini", "Claude"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/tommy-tuberville-brags-he-talks-to-chatgpt-as-congress-ramps-up-ai-use", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/tommy-tuberville-brags-he-talks-to-chatgpt-as-congress-ramps-up-ai-use.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/tommy-tuberville-brags-he-talks-to-chatgpt-as-congress-ramps-up-ai-use.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/tommy-tuberville-brags-he-talks-to-chatgpt-as-congress-ramps-up-ai-use.jsonld"}}