Political campaigning has never been a pretty process, but as unregulated generative AI continues to improve, it’s easier than ever for politicians to put on appearances.
It doesn’t matter whether AI should be part of politics or not; it already is. With the evolution of technology comes new weapons being used in the political landscape. This is clear in recent years, as political campaigns and organizations use AI to produce misleading attacks against candidates. Deceptive AI-generated content, such as deepfake advertisements, can fabricate any person’s words, actions or appearance while presenting lies as reality. Lawmakers need to put limits on the deceptive use of AI-generated content before it becomes another accepted campaign strategy.
Unlike traditional political ads voters are constantly bombarded with, artificially created political content convincingly portrays fake scenarios that are rooted in misinformation. These deepfakes can spread across social media within minutes, allowing fabricated videos, images or audio clips to harm candidates’ campaigns without their knowledge.
In the May 2026 Republican primary for Kentucky’s 4th congressional district between Rep. Thomas Massie and Ed Gallrein, super political action campaign (PAC) attack ads showed an AI-generated video of Massie checking into a hotel with Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, and accused Massie of betraying the MAGA agenda. A month earlier, AI ads depicted Gallrein as running away from a Trump rally, an attempt to depict him as disloyal to the president’s agenda.
All of these attack ads came from independent PACs; however, both candidates were quick to point fingers at each other and claimed the use of this type of ad was dishonest and, for Massie, “an insult to older voters who don’t know that AI exists.”
Neither candidate came out with plans or legislation to limit the damage this did for themselves. Massie was one of two votes against the TAKE IT DOWN Act, a bipartisan bill that made posting or threatening to post computer-generated pornographic content of real people online a federal crime, with Massie saying the bill was a “slippery slope.” Gallrein embraced AI during the race, as his campaign posted a completely AI-generated caption in a now-deleted Instagram post. It was only when it hurt their own campaigns that they were the most willing to come out against AI.
The traditional attack ads that voters are used to are known to exaggerate facts and stretch the truth, but the embrace of AI in politics allows campaigns to fabricate entirely fictional events that appear to be real. Prior to AI, Photoshop was one of the few ways of attempting to fabricate narratives. However, it was much harder to make photoshopped content look realistic, a problem AI has fewer issues with. To a voter, if it sometimes appears to be real, it might become their reality and influence how they vote at the ballot box.
Elected officials and influential partisan accounts have also been increasingly sharing AI-generated political content, making artificial media look like just another campaign strategy.
President Trump has become a fan of these videos and images. He shared at least 19 fake images and videos during his 2024 presidential campaign. Trump shared an artificial image of his then-opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, addressing a communist event in Chicago ahead of the Democratic National Convention. In early August of 2024, Trump would also go on to share a fake endorsement from singer Taylor Swift despite Swift not supporting him and later endorsing Harris after the September debate. These posts were used to misrepresent both his detractors and supporters, bolstering his image with imaginary evidence.
When the leader of the country uses AI-generated content as a tool, it becomes normalized. What was once seen as a deceptive technique just becomes another form of campaigning. It becomes hard to avoid this synthetic media, as candidates benefit from the tool and voters have little ability to directly suppress the use of such deception.
Congress and state legislatures should be requiring clearer disclosures for the use of AI in political advertisements. While all types of political speech should have broad protection, it’s still important to ensure that campaigning doesn’t enter a new level of falsehood and misrepresentation.
If AI campaigning is normalized for voters, politics becomes an arms race of generation and accusation. Voters should be spending time evaluating candidates’ arguments, not the truth of their social media posts. All governments, federal and local, should be focusing on clear rules for detrimental, undisclosed AI in campaign advertising. The future of politics should not be determined by which campaign was able to generate the prettier looking lie.
Diego Ruiz-Sagrero is an Opinion Intern for the summer 2026 quarter. He can be reached at druizsag@uci.edu.
Edited by Ruby Goodwin and Geneses Navarro.
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