Election information and safeguards in 2026

Ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, we’re continuing our work to help people access reliable voting information and supporting election defenders. Here are some updates on that work:

Our Democracy Works ⁠ (opens in a new window) integration is now live in the U.S. across languages, bringing information about registration, deadlines, voting locations and other election requirements directly into ChatGPT. Democracy Works compiles this information with state and local election officials and monitors changes throughout the election period. Responses also include links to official election sources so people can check the details for themselves.

Our integration with The Associated Press ⁠ (opens in a new window) brings live vote counts into ChatGPT for elections in the U.S. and Brazil, after polls close. Election officials remain the authority on voting rules and certified results.

While the public, policymakers, campaigns, and companies work to develop norms for AI use in politics, we continue to prohibit the use of our products to create or distribute scaled campaign messaging for or against a candidate, political party, or ballot measure. We do think political campaigns should be able to use our tools for responsible, human-directed work, like drafting internal briefings, planning, everyday writing, translation work, compliance, and administrative tasks. These use cases are allowed under our usage policies.

This is an important moment for cyber defenders across industries, and we believe AI plays a critical role in hardening digital infrastructure—including systems that support elections. OpenAI is committed to building resilience across the infrastructure stack, including in ways that support election execution.

And we are excited to support legislation that would advance transparency:

We will continue to learn from partners, update our safeguards, and adapt. Our goal is to support people’s ability to participate freely in elections and make their own decisions—with reliable information, transparency, and effective safeguards. We look forward to deepening the ways we can support our users, civil society, and voters as they participate in elections this year and beyond.

We now apply image stylization to requests for images depicting election interference or that may discourage voting. These outputs produce stylized – also known as cartoonified – illustrations, rather than photorealistic images, to help reduce the risk that an imagined scene is mistaken for documentary evidence. This approach preserves room for illustrations and social commentary. Our policies prohibiting election interference and demobilization always apply, even if that misuse involves cartoonified imagery.

Through our Daybreak ⁠ program, we’ve offered voting-system manufacturers registered with the U.S. Election Assistance Commission and state election authorities special access to models for cyber defense at no cost, to help them identify weaknesses and harden election infrastructure. We are also working with elections services vendors.

We also continue to prohibit using our products to create or distribute scaled campaign messaging, including images and video, that advocate for or against a candidate, political party or ballot measure. Campaigns can use our tools for responsible, human-directed work ⁠ (opens in a new window) , including internal briefings, planning, everyday writing, translation, compliance and administrative tasks.