‘That erodes trust in the whole conversation’: Brad Bradford is using an app to bolster support leading up to the municipal election

Is Brad Bradford using a social networking app to bolster his popularity in the lead-up to the mayoral election?

The mayoral hopeful, who currently represents Ward 19, Beaches–East York as city councillor, is running against incumbent mayor Olivia Chow in the 2026 Toronto Municipal Election. 

With only weeks remaining until Toronto residents head to the polls, it appears Bradford is using a social media networking application called Victory LogiVote, which is founded by Israeli-based Yayasoft group, a company that creates digital and online voting systems.

Now Toronto attempted to access Bradford’s campaign through the Victory app but was roadblocked by a prompt that says, “New Here? Please enter your party’s token to continue.” 

But according to screenshots from Rory White at Canada’s National Observer, who first broke this story on Monday, voters who sign up to help Bradford in the Victory app are given tasks for rewards. 

How the Victory app works

The tasks are split into four categories: General Tasks, Digital Fighters, Canvassing, and Events. Under the Digital Fighters task, users are encouraged to either share social media posts with supporters, post feedback, or give a like. To incentivize voters to complete tasks, the software offers rewards of in-app coins. 

Here is where it gets dicey. After clicking on “post feedback,” the app shows the text, “we are generating the post text for you. Please wait.” Supporters are then prompted to “copy the next text suggestion” — the suggestion being a pro-Bradford comment that they’re supposed to paste in the comment section of a targeted social media post regarding the mayoral election. To earn in-app coins and points, users are also prompted to enter their social media handles.

For example, one of the screenshots White provided to Now Toronto shows a comment that reads, “It’s honestly a relief to hear someone actually say what most of us feel—this city could be so much better. Glad you’re not pretending it’s all fine like the rest.”

This begs the question, are these comments generated by artificial intelligence (AI)?

Bradford responds

Now Toronto reached out to Bradford’s team for comment. A campaign spokesperson wrote back with, “The Victory App is cutting-edge campaign technology, and our campaign is leading the way in bringing innovation to Canadian campaigns.” 

“The suggested comments and messaging feature helps supporters share their views and reach out to friends, family and their networks. Every comment is reviewed, edited and posted by a real supporter, from their own account, under their own name. It’s no different from a campaign handing out talking points, literature and lawn signs — just faster.”

Now Toronto did not mention any concerns that the comments in the Victory app are AI generated anywhere in our email to Bradford’s office. However, we did ask if he’s worried about the app rewarding users for posting comments supporting him on social media, which we did not receive a response for.

In Bradford’s campaign spokesperson’s response, they called out Chow’s use of an American app called NationBuilder, which dubs itself as “Human-centric technology for your cause/nonprofit/campaign/movement.”

“Citizens lose the ability to tell genuine opinions”

To get an expert opinion on the ethics concerning Bradford’s use of the Victory app, Now Toronto reached out to Carmi Levy, an independent technology journalist and Vaseem Baig, an AI expert who closely follows use of AI in political movements. 

Baig says if the comments generated by the Victory app are AI, as hinted by the “we are generating the post text for you” prompt, then citizens lose the ability to distinguish real opinions.

“If supporters are posting AI-written comments as their own words, citizens lose the ability to tell genuine opinions from coordinated messaging,” he explains. “That erodes trust in the whole conversation, not just one campaign.”

Another part of the Victory app that has put experts on edge is a feature that prompts users to share their contact lists with the app for more rewards — information of people who did not agree to be part of Bradford’s campaign.

“Consent matters, even where the law hasn’t caught up.”

Baig also warns that if this kind of technology becomes the norm in Canadian elections, then voters will stop trusting what they read online and information on the internet becomes “much harder to use for real conversation.”

Levy says he understands why Bradford chose to use an application that rests on the hands of eager supporters, as “election campaigns live and die on the power of volunteers.” 

“Many of the workflows inherent in any campaign are, by design, labour intensive,” he says. “You need people to get stuff done, like canvassing, putting signs on lawns, and increasingly, engaging on social media.”

Instead of needing to have one-on-one engagements, which takes a lot more time and manpower, or having supporters copy and paste the exact same messaging on social media posts, Levy says the app “uses AI to at least pretend to make each message relatively unique.” 

But at the same time, he understands that it feels icky that the Victory app is attempting to convince voters that the alleged AI generated comments will “encourage meaningful political engagement.”

“I’m as disappointed with the morally shallow justifications for its use as I am with the technology itself, and feel it puts us on a slippery slope where one bot/agent/model is pitted against another.”

Late Tuesday afternoon, as this article was nearing publication, Bradford’s campaign sent an updated email with this new addition. 

“I saw the good people at Progress Toronto are trying to stoke up online chatter and frankly hatred about campaign technology we’re using. Happy to provide this statement on the record (I posted it in the comments on the Progress Toronto instagram page too). Feel free to quote me.”