Voters are increasingly turning to AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini to research ballots and even decide votes in the 2026 midterms. People use them to enumerate races on their ballots, produce comparative tables for down-ballot contests, verify viral claims and build voter tools like Ballot Lookup. NPR profiles several users - Adam Johnson in West Virginia used ChatGPT for hours to match candidates to his priorities, Lisa Veldran used Gemini to compare gubernatorial hopefuls, and Lakshmi Iyer used Claude to assemble a nonpartisan lookup site - while Pew Research finds about half of American adults use AI chatbots and 42% use them for information searches. AI companies point to election safeguards; some firms did not respond to requests for comment.
Experts and users flag specific risks alongside convenience. Rafael Batista of Johns Hopkins warns models are agreeable and subtly persuasive, reinforcing preexisting leanings; commercial models’ opaque training and source selection hide possible biases. Chatbots also hallucinate, so some users cross-check answers across models, hide personal cues in prompts or run queries in incognito mode. The decline of local news amplifies reliance on these tools, and while many users report feeling prepared to vote after AI-assisted research, the technology’s sycophantic tendencies and unverifiable sourcing leave open questions about how informed those choices really are.
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Reflection AI, founded by former DeepMind researchers, has released its first open-source model called Beam, designed to outperform other Western models in coding and agentic tasks. Beam requires significantly less computing power, making it faster and cheaper to operate, and is comparable to Chinese models like GLM-5.2 and Qwen 3.8-Max. (semafor.com)
Reflection has launched Beam, a 501-billion-parameter open-weight sparse Mixture-of-Experts model designed for coding, reasoning, and agentic tasks. The model was pretrained on extensive datasets and trained with reinforcement learning, achieving competitive performance with high inference efficiency. (reflection.ai)
OpenAI's recent model releases and pricing changes have frustrated users, with GPT-6 Sol performing poorly despite high expectations. DevDay announcements included higher prices and vague usage limits, disappointing many Codex users. (insufferable.dev)
Spacebar is a real-time workspace designed for humans and AI to collaborate on a shared surface. Users can request early access, invite others, and build on a platform with high availability and compliance standards. (spacebar.ai)
OpenAI outlines its strategy for complying with EU text provenance regulations. The approach focuses on ensuring transparency and accountability in AI-generated text tracking. (openai.com)
GPT-6 Astra successfully cracked the 217-year-old Napoleonic code within six hours using a single image prompt. The achievement highlights the model's ability to perform complex codebreaking tasks rapidly and efficiently. (tomshardware.com)
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