Whether as short-form slop Reels or the data centers that spit them out, Americans are absolutely sick of AI. Their elected officials, however, are going all-in — both embracing gobs of money from tech lobbying arms, and increasingly even embracing the tech to churn out attack ads to tarnish their opponents.
According to reporting from the New York Times, AI generated election ads have become a hundred-million dollar business, generating over $137 million in promotional revenue already in the current election cycle. That’s nearly a quarter of all spending on midterm political advertising overall — which amounts to a cool $565 million in spending across all US house and senate campaigns, according to Wesleyan University’s Wesleyan Media Project research lab.
To date, Wesleyan media researchers found that political action groups have generated over 220 midterm election ads with AI. The vast majority, or 80 percent of those are made by Republicans, with 20 percent generated by Democrats.
For example, one ad by Make Oklahoma Great Again shows Republican candidate for Oklahoma governor Mike Mazzei embracing an AI-version of Hillary Clinton, while an AI Donald Trump pouts off to the side. “Clinton lover, Trump hater,” the ad intones. “That’s Mike Mazzei.”
The ad contains no mention that it was generated by AI. As the NYT notes, the PAC has spent over $200,000 buying TV ad time for the AI commercial across the state of Oklahoma.
“I think what we’re seeing with AI has surprised even us,” professor of government and co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project Erika Franklin Fowler told the NYT. “Some of the ways in which AI is used, honestly, if there wasn’t a disclaimer on the ad, it would be hard to know that AI was there.”
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