Nothing Is Stopping the Flood of A.I. Political Ads
The New Yorker · Kyle Chayka ·
Kyle Chayka reports on the phenomenon of political attack ads that feature an A.I.-generated version of the opponent.
Bichler has noticed apparently A.I.-generated imagery in other North Carolina election ads, including ones targeting the state Senate candidates April Cook and James Gailliard. Even Lee himself has been a target of a kind of impersonation; according to Bichler, a group not connected with her campaign has put up cardboard cutouts of the senator gripping handfuls of money and wearing a shirt that says “I <3 special interest.” (He also appears to have peed his pants.) Whatever the outcome of the races on Tuesday, this year’s midterms season marks a tipping point for A.I. in campaigning. AdImpact, an organization that tracks political advertising, has identified fifty-eight unique ads across the country that deployed A.I.; more than ten million dollars has been spent to air them. (Lee’s campaign spent a total of more than a hundred thousand dollars on “Bonkers Bichler” and two follow-up ads.)
This is not the first election cycle to be touched by misleading A.I. content. In January, 2024, thousands of New Hampshire voters received a recorded message from a voice that sounded just like then President Joe Biden, discouraging listeners from voting in the local primary election. In reality, it was a deepfake created by Paul Carpenter, a magician from New Orleans, using the audio-generating A.I. tool ElevenLabs, on behalf of a consultant associated with Dean Phillips’s long-shot Presidential campaign. But, as A.I. models have grown more powerful, more accessible, and more affordable, releasing fake messages from one’s opponents has become something of a default political strategy. In October, 2025, Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral campaign posted a series of A.I. spots targeting Zohran Mamdani: one depicted him as an “Austin Powers” Mini-Me to Bill de Blasio; another showed a silent Mamdani running through the streets of Manhattan with a giant set of keys and messily eating rice with his hands. Like the infamous “Trump Gaza” slopaganda video that the President shared earlier last year, these were blatant and shoddy A.I. creations, with blurry, color-saturated backgrounds and overly smooth faces. The Cuomo videos were criticized as racist and quickly taken down, but they proliferated online regardless, playing a role similar to that of extreme political cartoons: exaggerated and offensive provocations that could be played off as jokes.
Today’s A.I. ads are more easily mistaken as real. Compare the Mamdani content to a recent attack ad against the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, by his opponent Stacy Garrity’s campaign. An A.I.-generated Shapiro, outfitted in a blue suit and casually tieless white shirt, with realistically coiffed hair and facial wrinkles, seems to testify to “deleting incriminating e-mails” and supporting “boys in girls sports.” There are no six-fingered hands here as a tell (though the imperfect voice replication might be a hint.) Lambasting an opponent’s record in office is the bread and butter of political attack ads, but candidates used to have to put their criticisms into the mouths of actors playing salt-of-the-earth voters—a plumber, say, or a factory worker. Now they can deposit any unflattering idea into the A.I.-generated mouth of the opponents themselves. Manuel Bonder, a spokesperson for Shapiro for Pennsylvania, described the ad to me as “cheap, dishonest AI bullshit” and pointed out Garrity’s support for “aggressive data center deregulation.”
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