An explosion of AI deepfakes is redefining American elections
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Campaign ads featuring AI-generated clips and images once sounded like a laughable concept. Now they're everywhere, with attack ads that place candidates in a wide variety of compromising — and fictitious — situations.
Why it matters: This largely unregulated practice is warping the unspoken norms of political campaigns and blurring the line between truth and fiction.
- Some campaigns voluntarily disclose this AI use, but it's not required.
- Democrats want to change that if they retake control of Congress in November.
Driving the news: The latest spot to push the envelope is an attack ad against Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico from a President Trump-aligned group called Citizens for Sanity.
- The ad depicts Talarico in a dress singing an abridged version of "Favorite Things" about transgender children.
- Talarico has been a frequent target of this practice: The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) used AI in March to depict Talarico reciting past social media posts. The posts were real. Talarico reading them was not.
Zoom out: While the Texas Senate race has been a hotbed of AI use — Republicans John Cornyn and Ken Paxton and Democrat Jasmine Crockett all utilized it to some extent in the primaries — it is far from the only one.
- The GOP primary in Kentucky's 4th district saw widespread AI use by both sides.
- That included a "throuple" ad, which contained deepfakes of Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) dining, checking into a hotel and holding hands with Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).
- Pro-Massie spots used AI to depict an elephant with Trump-like hair and a MAGA cap, and Ed Gallrein, Massie's challenger, abandoning Trump in a foxhole.
In Georgia, gubernatorial candidate Brad Raffensperger used AI in multiple ads to depict his GOP primary opponents wildly shooting guns in the air and fighting each other with pugil sticks.
- A new ad from another Georgia gubernatorial candidate, Burt Jones, is entirely AI-generated and features depictions of his GOP primary runoff opponent Rick Jackson shoveling money into a furnace and inflating a hot air balloon with his breath.
It's not just Republicans making use of AI:
- In Texas, Crockett made use of AI to inflate the crowd size in one of her ads and posted an AI video to social media of herself, Trump and others as babies.
- In New York City, Democrat-turned-independent Andrew Cuomo used AI in the mayoral election in an ad that portrayed him performing various jobs, including subway conductor, stockbroker, stagehand and window washer.
- In Maryland, a new ad from Democrat Harry Dunn in the 5th congressional district includes a brief shot of AI-generated men in suits reading "Crypto" and "AIPAC" tossing golden basketballs into a carnival free-throw game.
