Nothing is real AI tools are the hot new toys every kid wants for Christmas. Just like crypto was the hot, new, get-rich investment? We gave a sidelong glance at using AI in political campaigns just last week. The Atlantic‘s Russell Berman offers another take beginning with the CEO of the company behind ChatGPT, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, practically begging Congress (in Berman’s telling) to regulate his industry. Firms hyping the new tools name-drop candidates such as former Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman whose campaigns have used them already. But? “I don’t remember anyone using AI for anything on that campaign,” Kenneth Pennington, a digital consultant and one of the Fetterman campaign’s earliest hires, told me. Promoters pitch generative-AI as a way for small-time candidates to campaigns like the big kids, using it “to create digital ads, proofread, and even write press releases and fundraising pitches.” And to increase the number of targeted ads and emails you spend time blocking and deleting. What the robots won’t do is retail politics: Amanda Litman, the founder of Run for Something, an organization that recruits first-time progressive candidates, told me that the office seekers she works with aren’t focused on AI. Hyperlocal races are still won by the candidates who knock on the most doors; robots haven’t taken up that task, and even if they could, who would want them to? “The most important thing for a candidate is the relationship with a voter,” Litman said. “AI can’t replicate that. At least not yet.”…