Musk-Funded Super PAC Uses AI Robocaller 'Jennifer' to Attack Texas Democrat Talarico
The calls, first detected October 23, talk with voters in real time on behalf of Republican Senate hopeful Ken Paxton.
A pro-Ken Paxton super PAC that received $10 million from Elon Musk is running an AI-powered robocall campaign in Texas against Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, according to audio recordings reviewed by CNN.
The group, Lone Star Liberty, uses an AI-generated caller named "Jennifer" who describes herself as a virtual staffer. Unlike a traditional prerecorded message, the system talks with voters in real time, asking whom they supported and responding to the answers. "Hi, is this Julio? Hi. My name is Jennifer and I'm a virtual staffer with Lone Star Liberty calling in support of Republican Ken Paxton," the voice says in one recording.
The calls attack Talarico over data centers, alleging in one that he "took $11 million from data center special interests." A spokesperson for the PAC said the figure came from a Daily Caller report on donations to pro-Talarico political groups from individuals tied to the data center industry. Those donors included Reid Hoffman, who contributed $10 million to a super PAC backing Talarico this cycle.
CNN's KFile identified the calls through Nomorobo, a robocall and text-blocking app, and obtained recordings. The calls were first detected October 23, came from dozens of phone numbers, and reached a relatively small number of landlines, Nomorobo said.
There is an irony in the message. Musk, the world's richest person and the head of a leading AI company, is spending hundreds of millions of dollars of his own money on Republican campaigns and super PACs. Here, a PAC he funded is using an AI tool to attack a candidate for taking money from the data center industry that powers such tools.
Data centers have become one of the most potent political targets of the 2026 cycle, drawing opposition across party lines over energy use, costs and rapid expansion. Recent CNN polling found that more than 8 in 10 Americans are far more concerned than excited about the rapid development of artificial intelligence. Even so, campaigns are embracing AI-generated TV and digital ads and now conversational calls. These are hard for the public to track, partly because no centralized database exists.
Gregg Keller, a spokesperson for Lone Star Liberty, said the group is "using every tool available" to inform Texas voters of its criticisms of Talarico. The Talarico campaign responded: "Ken Paxton can't get humans to make calls for him, so Elon Musk is firing up his data centers to create the only volunteers willing to spread lies for their campaign: AI robots."
Nate Persily, a Stanford Law School professor and co-director of the Stanford Law AI Initiative, told CNN he is skeptical that AI robocalls move races, because people rarely pick up their phones and may hang up when they hear a virtual staffer. Even so, the Texas calls offer an early look at persuasion by conversational AI at a potentially massive scale, with Election Day days away.
