Before Congress writes a single rule for artificial intelligence, it has already picked a supplier. In the year to the end of March, House offices spent nine of every ten visible AI dollars on one product: OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The figures come from a CNBC analysis of House disbursement records. Of $113,740 spent on named AI vendors, ChatGPT took $100,580, about 88% of the money and 96% of the transactions. Anthropic’s Claude was a distant second at $13,160. ChatGPT now appears in at least 71 member offices, roughly one in six.
The work is exactly what you would expect. Staffers use the tools to summarise bills, draft memos, prepare hearing materials and answer constituents. Representative Julie Fedorchak, a North Dakota Republican, said a ChatGPT-built database of her legislative work was “saving dozens and dozens of hours every week” of staff time.
The skeptics are the biggest buyers
The politics are the awkward part. Democratic offices spent $54,165 on identifiable AI tools, more than three times the $15,782 from Republicans. ChatGPT turned up in 44 Democratic offices and 27 Republican ones. That is the same party whose members have warned loudest about AI’s risks to workers, privacy and elections, now leading the spending on it.
