CiviClick: The AI bot army influencing your representatives

Last August, the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners was considering their stance on an upcoming natural gas pipeline, the Southeast Supply Enhancement Project (SSEP), which was expected to be built through their community. The abnormally wide 42-inch pipeline, slated to be built along a shared right-of-way with three existing pipelines, faced widespread backlash for its climate and water impacts, as well as its potential disaster risk due to the parent company’s poor safety record and proximity to other pipelines next to schools, hospitals, and residential areas.

As they were considering their position, however, board members started to notice something strange. Thousands of emails were flooding their inboxes, ostensibly from community members, all in support of the project. Email campaigns regarding matters of public concern aren’t unusual, but this time, something was different: when Forsyth County Commissioner Dan Besse reached out to reply to his constituents, no one who responded remembered sending a message or signing onto an email campaign. Many didn’t even know what the SSEP was.

“Nobody ever responded saying, ‘Thanks for responding to my message.’ And that's unusual,” Besse said. “The only handful of responses that came back were from people saying, ‘I didn't send this.’”

The campaign traced back to CiviClick, an AI-powered “grassroots” advocacy agency that markets instant communication via an AI-powered message generator.

Williams Company, the owner of the proposed pipeline, gave conflicting accounts of the incident. Williams community relations employee Mike Atchie told the board that the company had engaged “groups” to communicate with the commissioners, which he said opted in on the simple basis of supporting energy infrastructure and “meeting reliable energy needs.” When pressed, he didn’t confirm that every sender agreed to send the specific message that was delivered, sometimes multiple times, from their email address. 

It isn’t clear how CiviClick got a hold of these people’s email information, but it is clear that Williams Company was involved. When Chairman Don Martin confronted one of the company’s representatives about the campaign, the emails stopped the next day.

In Forsyth County, CiviClick’s business model failed to deliver its promised results. Its manufactured “grassroots” campaign only served to sour the commission’s impression of Williams Company, and it passed a unanimous resolution against the pipeline on Aug. 18. According to Martin, it wasn’t the only reason the resolution passed–the project would have merely passed through the county, bringing no direct benefit, risking water pollution and potentially disastrous consequences if it ruptured–but it certainly didn’t help.

“I think the fact that a company would do that just struck people as dishonest,” Martin said. “And then you begin to wonder about the veracity of what a company is telling you if they are willing to send e-mails from people who didn't know their name was being used.”

Despite its embarrassing defeat, CiviClick’s campaign in Forsyth County was a shot over the bow for a new era of influence campaign. With CiviClick, anyone with enough money can summon an army of zombified “concerned citizens,” often commandeering people’s email addresses without consent, in order to give decision-makers the false impression that thousands of people have sprung up in defense of… fossil fuel interests, for some reason. 

Spam emails have always been a staple of astroturfing campaigns, but with real email addresses and AI-generated, unique messages, CiviClick’s website boasts that its campaigns are 86% less likely to be flagged as a form email by legislative staff, making it all the more difficult for decision-makers to realize they’re being conned. Even if staff are aware that some of the messages they are receiving aren’t genuine, it can be virtually impossible to sift through thousands of emails to understand what the public actually wants. It’s not just a matter of deceiving public officials, but drowning out real people and their real concerns in favor of those already in power.

When I last reported on CiviClick last fall, it was largely a hypothetical threat. It could sway decision-makers against the interests of their constituents, but as far as anyone was aware, it hadn’t yet. 

As it turns out, CiviClick had already been influencing critical policy choices behind the scenes.

On Feb. 17, The Los Angeles Times revealed that CiviClick had played a significant role in an air pollution regulation decision made months before. Last summer, the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) in Southern California, the most polluted region in the nation, rejected a scheme intended to phase out gas-powered appliances after being targeted by a CiviClick campaign. 

Usually, the number of public comments the district receives on any given issue can be counted on one hand. With CiviClick, they received more than 20,000. Sources within the AQMD told the Los Angeles Times that the apparent public outcry “definitely” had an impact on the board’s decision to vote down the measure by overwhelming staff and giving the false impression that the public opposed the regulations. It wasn’t until the LA Times investigated, months later, that it was discovered that the movement was entirely falsified.

The in-person public hearing told another story. 149 people turned out to speak their minds about the measure. While a handful of city representatives testified against the regulations out of concern for increased costs on low-income homeowners, the vast majority were in favor, including representatives of Sierra Club, the Sunrise Movement, and the Local 501.

“These are rules that will reduce a massive amount of pollution,” David Martinez, a member of Climate Action Campaign, told the board. “These are rules that will save billions of dollars in health costs, these are rules that will save [sic] cases of asthma, these are rules that will save lives.”

Apparently, the bots spoke louder.

Matt Klink, the “mastermind” behind the campaign, was nothing but proud of this accomplishment, claiming that it made the “ultimate difference” in shooting down the smog-reducing regulation. Klink’s public affairs agency is a partner at California Strategies, one of the largest lobbying firms in California. Its clients include corporate landlord groups, energy conglomerates, and Fortune 500 energy company Sempra, owner of the massive Southern California Gas Company, according to Futurism. Klink declined to say who funded the campaign.

With the power of CiviClick, a fossil-fuel affiliated lobbyist was able to put his finger on the scale of an air quality regulation in the most heavily polluted region in the country. This AQMD decision was, in the grand scheme of fossil fuel profits, a miniscule one: a plan to slowly phase out gas water heaters and furnaces by imposing fees which would make electric alternatives more appealing. According to an AQMD staff presentation, the regulation would have cut smog-causing nitrogen oxide by 6.1 tons per day, a step towards reducing health risks associated with smog and bringing the region back into Clean Air Act compliance to avoid sanctions by the federal government.

Yet, thanks to Klink and CiviClick, the natural gas industry unilaterally drowned out any concern for public health in favor of moneyed interests, all without having to convince a single actual human being. 

The use of AI to manipulate elected officials has troubling implications. Not only does CiviClick have the ability to mislead our representatives, it also makes it more difficult for them to engage with us directly–at least through digital means. Even the most well-meaning, informed, and publicly-engaged leaders would struggle to wade through tens of thousands of emails to get to the truth of what their constituents want. In a world where the people are increasingly alienated from the governments who are supposed to serve them and money plays more and more of a role in decision making, the prospect of a new technology that produces public influence campaigns without needing the help of the public is a threatening one.

And what’s worse? It’s entirely possible–almost certain, even–that this is much more widespread than we know. The pipeline project Forsyth County was considering alone is expected to pass through several counties and countless municipalities across Virginia, North Carolina, and Alabama. Is it really likely that Williams Company only sought to influence the government of Forsyth County, rather than the more populous Guilford County? CiviClick’s involvement in the AQMD decision wasn’t discovered until this year, far too late.

One thing AI cannot do, however, is turn out in person. While the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners was receiving thousands of emails in favor of the SSEP, organizers and public testimony made it crystal clear that the real-world people of the county opposed the project: in fact, not a single person commented in favor of the pipeline during public hearings. For months, local activists worked to make their voices heard, and it worked. The Republican-dominated Forsyth County Board of Commissioners unanimously passed a resolution of concern despite CiviClick’s influence campaign, as did several other municipalities in the impacted area. 

Ultimately, the SSEP was approved despite widespread opposition. The people in power don’t always listen to their constituents, but it’s vital that we don’t allow technocrats to take away our ability to let them know—make them know—what we want from them. If at all possible, the best way to do that is to make them look you in the eye.