Can Congress Use AI?

As Artificial Intelligence becomes part of everyday work across the economy, lawmakers and staff are working to modernize the legislative branch and the tools that make Congress more efficient. But adopting AI on the Hill is complicated by the way Congress actually works: every office operates differently, staff have varying levels of experience with these tools, and guidance alone does not always translate into confident use. Our latest episode examines how Congress can close that gap by providing members and staff with the training, guardrails, and practical support they need to use AI responsibly and effectively. Shane is joined by Aubrey Wilson, managing director of POPVOX Foundation. She has extensive experience on Capitol Hill as a former House legislative assistant, legislative correspondent, and deputy staff director for the Committee on House Administration in the 118th Congress. She was also a member of the R Street Institute’s governance policy and federal affairs team. Her work on the Hill and in academia provides a creative foundation for discussing how Congress is using AI. Below is a lightly edited and abridged transcript of our discussion. You can listen to this and other episodes of Explain to Shane on AEI.org and subscribe via your preferred listening platform. If you enjoyed this episode, leave us a review, and tell your friends and colleagues to tune in. Shane Tews:   Can you start by telling us about POPVOX, the foundation, and what your mission is? Aubrey Wilson: POPVOX Foundation is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization. We’re mostly a group of recovering congressional staffers who worked inside legislatures and became frustrated with the technology and resources available to us. That firsthand experience with the day-to-day friction of congressional work showed us how much better the institution could function with stronger internal tools and resources. It motivated a group of people to come together and create POPVOX Foundation. POPVOX is an educational foundation focused on strengthening legislatures by helping legislative staff and members access the tools, resources, and knowledge they need to do their jobs better, regardless of where they fall on the political aisle. What has the rollout of AI been like in Congress? The state of AI in Congress right now is really mixed, and much of that goes back to member autonomy. Every member runs their office differently, so each office decides the scope of AI use and how comfortable it is with the technology. Some members come from a tech background, so their staff have fully adopted AI tools and are moving quickly. Other members are deeply uncomfortable with the technology because it is moving so fast, and some have completely banned it in their offices. There is also different guidance across the House and Senate because each chamber has its own IT infrastructure and IT office. In the House, ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are approved, along with Microsoft Copilot as an enterprise-wide option. In the Senate, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot are approved, but Claude is not. That creates confusion about what is approved where. When staff from different offices get together for coffee, they may not even have access to the same tools. There is also confusion about appropriate use cases. Even though the IT offices have approved certain tools, they have not provided much training. The IT departments do not want to tell offices exactly how to use the tools because they want members to set the comfort level for their own staff. But as a result, there have not been many resources available to teach staff how to use these tools safely and responsibly. POPVOX Foundation has been working to help fill that gap. We have been doing trainings across the House and Senate, going office by office to talk about how these tools can be used by every type of staffer and even by members themselves. My trainings have run the gamut. Some staff are very comfortable with AI, while others have still never touched the tools and remain hesitant because of concerns about hallucinations and other risks. But in 2026, I definitely feel like members and staff came back to work realizing that AI is here to stay. There is more curiosity now and more dedication to learning about these tools and getting different perspectives on how they can be used. The institution is starting to catch up and support staff and members, but there is still room for more creative approaches and more knowledge-sharing between offices. What is it that you do when you walk into an office? How does it go? The traditional approach is to hold a large briefing: rent a big room, invite a bunch of staff, and run through best practices and use cases with a slide deck. What we have found is that, in those settings, staff are often uncomfortable asking the questions they really have, or they have a very specific workflow idea they want to explore. A legislative director, staff assistant, or LD may wonder whether AI could help with their daily tasks, but they may not want to ask that in front of everyone. A lot of staff simply have not had the chance to sit down and see how an LLM works in a safe environment. So our trainings are office by office. We are invited in by chiefs of staff to sit around the conference table with the DC team, and sometimes the district team too, and have a full team-wide conversation. We start with the rules: what is House-approved, what is Senate-approved, what the institutional guardrails are, and what the office’s own policy is. If the office has not set its own policy yet, our training becomes a useful opportunity for the chief of staff to discuss what that policy should be and where the guardrails should be. Surprisingly, there are still many staffers who have never logged on to ChatGPT or written a prompt. So we cover the basics: what an LLM is, how to ask a good question, prompting best practices, and live demos. I pull up the approved models in real time so staff can see how each one responds a little differently, almost like each model has its own personality. Honestly, a lot of this is just creating space. Staff are so busy, and the technology is moving so quickly, that many have fallen behind not because they want to, but because their calendars are full and they have never had a moment to stop and learn a new tool. The training gives them that moment to think about how they personally can use AI to take some weight off their workload. What’s a favorite prompt of the staff? There are so many. Early on, one of the most common uses was brainstorming bill acronym names because staff care a lot about coming up with good bill acronyms. But the prompt I really love is using AI to translate complex policy topics into language that a normal person in the district can understand. Whether it is a complicated appropriations process or a nuanced financial policy proposal, AI can help turn it into relatable talking points. We are also seeing many district offices use AI to translate federal resources into multiple languages so more constituents can access and understand them. The post Can Congress Use AI? appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI .