# Congress's favorite AI tool? ChatGPT dominates federal spending

> New disclosure data shows that when House offices and committees reach for an AI tool, they overwhelmingly reach for ChatGPT. OpenAI's chatbot accounted for roughly 90 percent of all AI spending on Capitol Hill in the year ending March 31, about 100,580 dollars across 798 transactions, while Anthropic's Claude trailed far behind at 13,160 dollars over just 37 transactions. The partisan split is almost as striking as the market share. Democratic offices spent 54,165 dollars on AI tools, more than three times the 15,782 dollars logged by Republicans, even as both sides quietly fold these systems into daily work. Staffers use them to draft memos, analyze legislation, answer constituent mail, and churn out social posts. The numbers are small in federal terms, but the signal is not. They show how thoroughly a single consumer product has embedded itself in the machinery of American lawmaking, and they raise obvious questions about accuracy, disclosure, and vendor lock-in as the people writing the country's AI rules increasingly depend on one company's model to do their jobs.

_Section: [Daily AI Updates](https://www.wortins.com/daily-ai) · Source: TechCrunch · Published Tuesday, August 4, 2026_

## Wortins' read

New disclosure data shows that when House offices and committees reach for an AI tool, they overwhelmingly reach for ChatGPT. OpenAI's chatbot accounted for roughly 90 percent of all AI spending on Capitol Hill in the year ending March 31, about 100,580 dollars across 798 transactions, while Anthropic's Claude trailed far behind at 13,160 dollars over just 37 transactions. The partisan split is almost as striking as the market share. Democratic offices spent 54,165 dollars on AI tools, more than three times the 15,782 dollars logged by Republicans, even as both sides quietly fold these systems into daily work. Staffers use them to draft memos, analyze legislation, answer constituent mail, and churn out social posts. The numbers are small in federal terms, but the signal is not. They show how thoroughly a single consumer product has embedded itself in the machinery of American lawmaking, and they raise obvious questions about accuracy, disclosure, and vendor lock-in as the people writing the country's AI rules increasingly depend on one company's model to do their jobs.

## Source

[Read the full story at TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2026/08/03/congresss-favorite-ai-tool-chatgpt/)

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