The AI attack-ad nightmare is coming true

AI is producing reality-bending midterm ads about defaced Bibles, upscale dinners and a board game with a "Death to America" playing card.

Why it matters: The warnings about deepfakes are coming true. Election laws haven't kept pace with a world where campaigns can put words in opponents' mouths and create realistic-looking scenes that didn't happen.

The Wesleyan Media Project found $137 million had been spent on 220 AI-generated ads through Oct. 11, mostly from Republicans.

• Four states have laws prohibiting certain uses of AI-generated deepfakes in political ads, while 27 more require some form of disclosure about their use.
• No federal law specifically regulates AI-generated political ads.

The big picture: An Axios analysis found numerous political ads partly or fully made by generative AI, sometimes undisclosed.

Georgia Senate: Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Senate Republicans, has run a series of AI-generated deepfake ads depicting Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff getting beauty treatments.

• The ads mock Ossoff's reported campaign spending on hair and makeup, saying he "talks pretty" but has "an ugly record" and "a lot to cover up."
• Ossoff said in a C-SPAN interview: "It is deeply troubling to see ... deepfake videos used to fabricate political advertising. And it's a slippery slope toward the destruction of truth in political debate, and the ad should come down immediately."
• The ads don't disclose AI use, which Georgia law doesn't require.

Michigan Senate: A super PAC called Front Line Action used AI in an ad depicting Democratic candidate Abdul El-Sayed in a fabricated family photo with podcaster Hasan Piker and four women wearing niqabs.

• Another AI-generated scene has El-Sayed playing a Risk-style board game with his half-sister, Eman Abdelhadi, and Piker. It depicts cards bearing statements that include "Death to America," "Do not Celebrate Thanksgiving" and "Celebrate 9/11."
• The group has defended the ad, telling CNN it is "grounded in El-Sayed's own public statements and documented reporting and records concerning him and individuals associated with or supportive of his campaign."
• The ad features both a written and spoken disclosure that it was "created in whole or in part with the use of artificial intelligence."

New York governor: Republican Bruce Blakeman's campaign and allied super PACs have repeatedly used generative AI in ads attacking Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, with varying degrees of disclosure.

• One AI-generated ad released by the Blakeman campaign depicts the Tooth Fairy struggling to come up with cash to give to children, saying she "just can't afford to be the Tooth Fairy in Kathy Hochul's New York."
• Another Blakesman spot says onscreen: "We asked AI what a truthful Kathy Hochul ad would look like." The ad features AI-generated scenes of Hochul attending an upscale dinner and standing outside a police precinct while a man asks her: "Want some crack?"

Pennsylvania governor: A new ad from Republican candidate Stacy Garrity features an AI-generated version of Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro talking about taxes, abortion and data centers.

• The spot puts this quote in his mouth: "This ad was created with AI, thanks to big, beautiful data centers. Fact is, I was the one who fast-tracked data centers right here in PA, right after they handed me $5 million in political contributions."
• Shapiro spokesperson Manuel Bonder, in a statement to Axios, dismissed the ad as "cheap, dishonest AI bullshit."

Texas Senate: Democratic candidate James Talarico has been a consistent target of AI-generated ads from both Republican Ken Paxton's campaign and outside super PACs.

• A Paxton campaign ad uses AI to depict Talarico defacing a Bible with crayon and saying, "In the beginning God was non-binary, and he wasn't a Christian. And God said, 'let there be six genders,' and there were."
• Talarico told NBC he "tried in the legislature to ban AI deepfake videos in political campaigns because they are misleading. They are lying about a candidate in this race."

Kentucky's 6th District: No Going Back PAC, backed by President Trump's MAGA Inc., has run several ads using AI to boost Republican congressional candidate Ralph Alvarado.

• One ad features multiple AI-generated deepfakes of Democrat Zach Dembo, including one scene in which he stares into the camera.
• "I expected them to lie about my record, but I did not expect them to lie about my appearance," Dembo said in a statement to Axios, adding that "using AI to create fake or misleading images is the beginning of a very dangerous path for our democracy."