AI-Generated Political Ads Spread Across 2026 Campaigns

Bichler is running for North Carolina state Senate this fall. The district where she is campaigning, in and around Wilmington, is deep purple, and she knew it would be a tough fight. But she was surprised when she appeared in an ad from Lee. The ad showed an AI-generated Bichler contorting her body into bizarre shapes and making claims about her stances on policing and healthcare.

Bichler, who also owns a yoga studio, told NPR, 'I feel like I kind of hardened myself for some teasing and things like that, but the AI kind of took me aback.' She added, 'It was my face, it was my body moving around, but it was not anything I'd ever consented to or participated in creating.' The ad included a disclaimer that it used AI.

In a statement, Lee told NPR that voters in his district 'are smart enough to spot comedy and obvious parody when they see it.' He added, 'For years, leftist groups have distorted my image in ads. I didn't cry foul or complain; I worked harder to earn this community's trust.'

New data shows AI political advertisements like these are popping up all over the country. 'It's getting way more common,' said Michael Franz, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks political ad spending. Some AI ads have appeared in high-profile races, such as Spencer Pratt's run for mayor of Los Angeles and the Texas Senate race between James Talarico and Ken Paxton. But many, like the ad against Bichler, are appearing in down-ballot or local elections. Franz said that is not surprising: 'It's a way to enhance the content of your ads, make them look pretty sharp, and it doesn't cost you all that much.'

AI-generated video was beginning to catch on during the 2024 election cycle. At the time, many experts feared it might lead to deepfake videos of candidates saying outrageous things. In response, 31 states have passed laws prohibiting deepfakes or requiring disclosures, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

But Scott Babwah Brennen, director of the Center on Technology Policy at New York University, said the wave of fakes never arrived. 'The problem of deceptive deepfakes hasn't really materialized as a widescale problem,' he said. 'But something else is happening.' That something is more akin to satire, according to NPR. One ad shows Ohio Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Sherrod Brown overstaying his welcome at a birthday party. Another, just released by Texas Republican Senate candidate Paxton, shows his rival, Democrat Talarico, reading from a bible. Talarico responded by calling the AI ad deceptive. Like the Bichler ad showing the yoga instructor in a physically impossible pose, these are not meant to deceive, NPR reported. They are more like parodies aimed at making political points, or as Brennen puts it, 'AI-generated slopaganda.'

'The AI is simply a tool,' said Todd Stiefel, a political independent who has funded primarily Democratic candidates in North Carolina over the years. During the 2024 campaign, Stiefel created what is believed to be the first AI-generated advertisement in the state. It depicted then-Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson as an AI monstrosity with 14 fingers, while citing his alleged conspiratorial positions on a number of topics. 'We decided that AI could be a way that we could help people see these words that came out of his mouth, although technically they came out of his typing,' Stiefel said. Robinson subsequently lost the race, in part due to comments he'd reportedly made online.

Stiefel believes that AI can be seen as an extension of the use of art in politics. Isabel Linzer, who tracks elections at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a think tank that follows AI's use in politics, also sees a connection. For hundreds of years, politicians have depicted opponents with exaggerated traits or shown them in ways that reflect their policies unfavorably, Linzer said. In that sense, 'AI is kind of facilitating the next version of the political cartoon.' But Linzer says these ads are also different because AI technology can generate lifelike videos, and because it is so new, she thinks it could influence voters in really unpredictable ways. 'It's hard to make an assumption about how people who are scrolling online all over the country with all different kinds of backgrounds necessarily are perceiving the content that they're seeing,' she said.

Bichler said some of her supporters thought the yoga video generated by her opponent was real. They questioned how Lee got into her studio space and how she consented to be on camera, she said.