If you’re worried about the growing use of hyperrealistic AI-generated content in politics, you’re not alone. Some politicians feel the same way.
“When I’m on my feed today, I’m scared to death,” Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut told BI. “I have no idea what’s real and what’s not, and I don’t understand how we have a meaningful political dialogue in this country when there is no way for voters to distinguish between what’s real and what’s not.”
Everywhere you look online, politicians and political groups are using AI to make a point.
Most recently, President Donald Trump posted an AI-generated video in which the president is depicted dumping a brown substance widely assumed to be feces onto protestors out of a fighter jet.
“I think it was mud,” Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming told BI. “But maybe not.”
But while Trump and his administration are some of the more consistent distributors of AI-generated content, some Democrats are using AI too.
In the New York City mayoral race, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo has posted several AI-generated videos on X attacking Zohran Mamdani, while Gov. Gavin Newsom’s X page is also filled with over-the-top AI-generated images, many of them mocking Trump and other Republicans.
Even Trump himself has said he thinks the proliferation of AI-generated content online is “a little bit scary, to be honest with you.”
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“President Trump is the greatest communicator in American history,” White House spokesperson Liz Huston told BI in a statement for this story. “No leader has used social media to communicate directly with the American people more creatively and effectively than President Trump.”
Lawmakers say that as long as those AI-generated videos and images are clearly recognizable as parodies, it’s not a huge deal. But in some cases, it’s not as clear.
“I think it’s a shocking message he was sending to the American people by reposting that, and it’s ridiculous that he did that,” Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona told BI, referring to Trump’s fighter jet video. “But what I’m concerned about are those videos where you can’t tell.”
One recent example: Senate Republicans’ campaign arm posted an AI-generated video of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declaring that “every day gets better for us” amid the ongoing government shutdown.
It was a real quote, said during an interview with Punchbowl News. But the video, which included a small, transparent disclaimer in the bottom right corner, was not.
“These were Chuck Schumer’s own words celebrating the shutdown he has voted for 13 times and the real-world consequences impacting American families,” said Joanna Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which produced the video. “He may wish people didn’t know he said them, but he did — and for $0 our video took a print quote seen by ‘100,000+’ Punchbowl subscribers to over 1.8 million views.”
“I think it’s worrisome. I think it’s something we’re gonna need to think through really hard,” Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri told BI, referring to the general spread of AI-generated political content. “Otherwise, everything you see on TV is gonna be fake.”
‘Regulation of AI is really hard’
Not everyone is worried about AI-generated content. Lummis, who said she was the subject of a parody when she first ran for the office for the first time in 1978, says we’re simply seeing a technologically advanced version of a long-standing practice.
“It’s more sophisticated, just the way movies are more sophisticated than even the original Star Wars movie,” Lummis said. “But it’s not new.”
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee who’s positioned himself as an ally of the burgeoning AI industry, says he doesn’t see the need for specific regulation around political deepfakes.
“I think the protections on free speech are at their height when it concerns political speech,” Cruz told BI, saying that “existing laws concerning fraud” can address the issue. “We need to make sure we’re protecting against real harms, but at the same time, not strangling the development of AI in the cradle.”
Cruz specifically praised Cuomo’s use of AI-generated content to attack Mamdani in the NYC mayoral race, saying that it’s “really effective” even though “nobody on earth” would think that it’s the real Mamdani appearing in the videos.
Even among those who want to see something done, there’s no easy answer available, given free speech protections.
“Regulation of AI is really hard, admittedly,” Murphy said. The Connecticut senator said he was open to trying to ban fake political content “or at the very least requiring clear, indelible watermarks” on AI-generated content.
Hawley is one of several cosponsors of a bill called the “Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act,” which would ban the use of deceptive AI-generated material for the use of influencing elections or raising campaign cash.
“To the extent we can as allowed by the First Amendment, I think we ought to prohibit most of the AI-generated totally fake stuff on TV in elections when it’s meant to influence the outcome of an election,” Hawley said.
For Kelly, the use of AI by American political campaigns is just the beginning of his concerns.
“We need to figure out, how do we make sure that this technology isn’t used against us by our adversaries,” Kelly said. “Forget about how political opponents could use it.”
