The rise of AI is quietly drowning out human voices in online political discussions, and it’s happening faster than most people realize. Generative AI is increasingly affecting new areas of human culture: AI has now been used to produce a chart-topping Spotify song, an award winning painting, and even a published research paper. But now, the technology is being used to sway political discourse. On Medium, a platform designed for public debate, nearly half of all posts are now AI-generated according to recent analyses.

This isn’t just a nuisance – it’s a direct threat to democracy. Citizens need to be able to hear the real opinions and values of other people in order to be informed voters. If we don’t take action, advanced AI bots could eventually drown out human political discourse entirely, leaving us with an artificial version of public debate that serves the interests of corporations and foreign actors instead of everyday Americans online.

News organizations are seeing traffic declines of up to 40% as platforms like Google push AI-generated summaries over human-written journalism. This will have a devastating impact on the dying journalism industry. Instead of reading perspectives from real reporters, Americans are increasingly consuming machine-produced content, which is often created without fact-checking, nuance, or accountability.

Here’s where it gets worse: foreign adversaries are weaponizing the flood of AI content online to manipulate the public. Recent investigations have revealed that Russia has been secretly flooding social media with AI-generated propaganda designed to shape American political views and deliberately “polluting” AI training data to ensure chatbots repeat Kremlin talking points. Russai’s goal? To erode trust in democratic institutions while boosting Russia’s geopolitical influence. Russia’s campaigns use fake accounts, deepfaked videos, and AI-written news articles to spread divisive narratives. It’s already hard enough for Americans to tell what’s real online without foreign countries actively pushing fake AI content onto us.

Foreign political persuasion campaigns using bots could be very effective. A recent study from the University of Washington demonstrated that AI chatbots can significantly influence political opinions — often more effectively than humans — through tailored arguments, biased interactions, and persistent engagement. It found that even short conversations with a biased AI bot were enough to sway people’s views.

If we don’t regulate AI’s role in public discourse, we risk surrendering online discourse in our democracy entirely.  Foreign governments shouldn’t be able to exploit AI to spread lies at scale. As AI-generated noise overwhelms genuine debate, we must act before real voices are silenced completely. AI companies must make sure that they are not allowing or facilitating the spread of misinformation and bot-driven content.

Despite these concerns, AI companies are racing to make their systems more powerful and harder to detect. In the near future, AI content may become nearly indistinguishable from human content. If Big Tech companies don’t face any oversight from those in power, AI content will continue flooding the internet without oversight and crowd out the unique views and values of everyday citizens online.

The solution isn’t to ban AI, but to enact sensible safeguards. Lawmakers need to consider what AI-driven manipulation means for our democracy. The longer AI dominates online discourse without rules, the harder it will be to reclaim our digital public square. Real democracy depends on real voices – not algorithms pretending to be people. Now’s the time to demand accountability for AI companies.