Proximity Launches Smart Messaging Engine, AI that Helps Civic Leaders Hear Community Sentiment and Act

Non-partisan civic AI turns real-time issues into personalized strategies to mobilize communities

SALT LAKE CITY, May 12, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Proximity today launched Smart Messaging Engine, the first AI built specifically for civic and political leaders that pairs social listening with personalized strategic recommendations to mobilize communities. Available immediately, the non-partisan Smart Messaging Engine monitors news, social media, and online communities, surfaces what people are actually saying, and helps leaders quickly communicate based on accurate public sentiment.

Closing the Gap Between Leaders and the People They Represent
Elected leaders on both sides of the aisle believe they understand their communities. Yet members of those communities consistently say they don't feel heard. Public opinion is louder than ever, but fragmented across Facebook groups, town halls, TikTok, and local conversations that no traditional research method captures fast enough. Polls are useful, but a snapshot taken two weeks ago can't tell a leader what their constituents care about today.

"Most campaigns don't lose because they're wrong about the issues. They lose because they connect with communities too late," said Becki Wright, founder and CEO of Proximity. "Proximity's new AI hears what communities are saying before the polls catch up. Smart Messaging Engine gives any leader the kind of real-time community intelligence that until now only the best-funded campaigns could afford."

More than 8 in 10 political consultants now use AI tools at least weekly, with nearly half of them using AI multiple times a day*. What sets Smart Messaging Engine apart is its leader profile: every output is shaped by the leader's biography, priority issues, competition, vocabulary, and trusted local sources. Smart Messaging Engine gives civic and political leaders and their teams a faster, sharper basis for decision-making and greater confidence in the messages they send.

"Proximity's Smart Messaging Engine turns real-time insight into clear direction, so we know where and when to focus on the legislative issues that matter most to our clients," said Curtis Oscarson, CEO and founder, Industry 219. "Rather than messy and unstructured feedback from raw AI chat, Smart Messaging Engine provides contextualized, smarter, and more well-rounded messages and intelligence that is curated specifically within our space."

Surfacing Emerging Issues and Community Sentiment Shifts
Smart Messaging Engine's intelligence layer listens continuously across news, social platforms, and community conversations in a leader's district. It surfaces majority opinion along with the smaller, earlier signals that often become tomorrow's defining issues, and tracks how sentiment shifts over time. When a local concern starts gaining ground, Smart Messaging Engine flags it, recommends a response, identifies the audiences and channels most likely to move, and connects to the outreach tools the campaign already uses, with native integration to Proximity Impact CRM.

Unlike traditional media monitoring or general-purpose AI assistants, Smart Messaging Engine retains context including geography, key stakeholders, past messaging, and what has and hasn't worked before. It is built for the local race: tuned to a leader's constituents and the trusted local voices that shape opinion in their district.

Key features include:

• Priority Alerts: Continuously monitors news and social media for events and conversations in a leader or organization's relevant location, ranks them by urgency, and surfaces the ones that need a same-day response.
• Active Competitor Analysis: Tracks opponents' messaging, media coverage, and strategic shifts as they happen, and flags moments—a spiking local issue, an opposition pivot, a swing in district sentiment—when the campaign needs to act before its rivals do.
• Content Generation Based on Strategic Intelligence: Drafts emails, texts, social posts, and talking points that reflect real-time district sentiment, local context, and competitive position so every outbound message is timed for the moment and tuned to the audience. A human always reviews before hitting send.

Smart Messaging Engine is designed specifically for civic and political use, with a human in the loop on every outbound message. It uses a combination of focused, smaller models for understanding and classifying signals, and larger models for drafting, with safeguards on data sourcing, leader-voice fidelity, and compliance with state and federal communication rules. Data is owned by the customer and never used to train external models.

Pricing and Availability
Proximity Smart Messaging Engine is available immediately, starting at $499 per user per month, or $4900 per year (an 18% discount on the monthly rate).

About Proximity
Proximity is the nonpartisan software platform built for civic and political leaders. Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, its software powers democracy by streamlining organization, operations, and outreach. Proximity replaces fragmented, outdated legacy tools with a single secure platform for reaching communities at every stage of leadership. Trusted by civic leaders and organizations in more than 30 U.S. states and Canada, Proximity's mission is to level the playing field for every leader who runs, wins, and governs in service of their community.

*Source: American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC) / 3D Strategic Research survey, March 2026 (n=213).

Proximity Media Contact:
Clay Helm
At the Helm Communications
[email protected]

SOURCE Proximity