Campaign ads featuring AI-generated clips and images have become widespread in the 2026 elections, with attack ads placing candidates in fictitious and compromising situations, Axios reported. The practice is largely unregulated, and it is warping the norms of political campaigns while blurring the line between truth and fiction. Some campaigns voluntarily disclose AI use, but it is not required, and Democrats want to change that if they retake control of Congress in November.
Who Gets Dragged Through the Machine
The latest spot highlighted by Axios is an attack ad against Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico from a President Trump-aligned group called Citizens for Sanity. The ad depicts Talarico in a dress singing an abridged version of "Favorite Things" about transgender children. Axios said Talarico has been a frequent target of this practice. The National Republican Senatorial Committee used AI in March to depict Talarico reciting past social media posts; the posts were real, but Talarico reading them was not.
That is the basic arrangement here: people running for office are turned into digital props, and the campaigns with the money and media access get to decide what reality looks like for everyone else. The result is not public debate so much as manufactured consent, with the apparatus of electoral politics rewarding whoever can flood the feed fastest.
The Campaigns Feeding the Noise
Axios said the Texas Senate race has been a hotbed of AI use, with Republicans John Cornyn and Ken Paxton and Democrat Jasmine Crockett all using it to some extent in the primaries. The outlet said the GOP primary in Kentucky's 4th district also saw widespread AI use by both sides, including a "throuple" ad containing deepfakes of Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., dining, checking into a hotel and holding hands with Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. Pro-Massie spots used AI to depict an elephant with Trump-like hair and a MAGA cap, and Ed Gallrein, Massie's challenger, abandoning Trump in a foxhole.
In Georgia, gubernatorial candidate Brad Raffensperger used AI in multiple ads to depict his GOP primary opponents wildly shooting guns in the air and fighting each other with pugil sticks. A new ad from another Georgia gubernatorial candidate, Burt Jones, is entirely AI-generated and features depictions of his GOP primary runoff opponent Rick Jackson shoveling money into a furnace and inflating a hot air balloon with his breath.
These are not isolated glitches. They are the campaign class adapting to a system where image management matters more than truth, and where the people at the bottom are expected to sort through a swamp of synthetic nonsense while the contenders fight over the machinery of power.
What They Call Reform
Axios also said AI is not just being used by Republicans. In Texas, Crockett used AI to inflate the crowd size in one of her ads and posted an AI video to social media of herself, Trump and others as babies. In New York City, Democrat-turned-independent Andrew Cuomo used AI in the mayoral election in an ad that portrayed him performing various jobs, including subway conductor, stockbroker, stagehand and window washer. In Maryland, a new ad from Democrat Harry Dunn in the 5th congressional district included a brief shot of AI-generated men in suits reading "Crypto" and "AIPAC" tossing golden basketballs into a carnival free-throw game.
Some campaigns voluntarily disclose AI use, but it is not required. Democrats want to change that if they retake control of Congress in November. That is the reform pitch: a rule here, a disclosure there, a promise that the same electoral machine can be made honest by asking it to label its own tricks. Meanwhile, the ads keep rolling, the candidates keep posturing, and the public is left to navigate a political marketplace where truth is just another asset to be manipulated.
Axios said the practice is largely unregulated and is warping the norms of political campaigns while blurring the line between truth and fiction. In the 2026 elections, that blur is not an accident. It is the product of a system that treats voters as targets, campaigns as brands, and reality as something to be edited for advantage.