‘Want some crack?’ Alarms blare as Republicans unleash tsunami of deepfaked attack ads

Republicans and their allies are flooding the 2026 midterms with attack ads made with artificial intelligence, and election laws are struggling to keep pace.The Wesleyan Media Project found that $137 million had been spent on 220 AI-generated political ads through Oct. 11, and most of that came from Republicans, reported Axios. Many of the ads put made-up words in Democrats’ mouths or show scenes that never happened, and some don’t disclose that AI was used at all.No federal law specifically regulates AI-generated political ads, and only four states ban certain uses of deepfakes in campaign advertising, while 27 others require some form of disclosure.Georgia has no disclosure requirement. There, the Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with Senate Republicans, has run a series of undisclosed deepfake ads showing Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff getting beauty treatments. Ossoff called the spots “a slippery slope toward the destruction of truth in political...