Ashley acts like an experienced human volunteer and analyses voters' profiles to tailor conversations around their key issues. Unlike a human, Ashley always shows up for the job, remembers all of Daniels' positions, and does not feel dejected when she's told to go forth and multiply.

The AI was designed by a London company Civox who must have thought it much better to inflict it on a country where cold calling is acceptable before trying it at home.

Civox CEO Ilya Mouzykantskii said the AI would scale fast as the cunning plan is to make  tens of thousands of calls a day by the end of the year and into the six digits pretty soon.

Daniels is the underdog in the campaign and sees this as a way to reach out to voters, particularly those who speak other languages (Ashley is fluent in over 20), and conduct many more "high bandwidth" conversations.

Of course the downside is so much cold calling could hack people off so much they refuse to go near the candidate.

In the US there are "few legal guardrails" regulating this particular use of AI. "No rules directly apply to what Civox is doing. Federal Trade Commission regulations ban telemarketers from making robocalls to people on the Do Not Call Registry. Still, the list does not apply to political calls -- and Civox's activity, with its 'personalised' messages, does not qualify as robocalling."