Republicans release AI deepfake of James Talarico as phony videos proliferate in midterm races [View all]

https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/13/politics/james-talarico-ai-deepfake-republicans-midterms

Senate Republicans released an online ad this week in which a real-looking but fake version of a Democratic candidate, fabricated with artificial intelligence, appears to speak directly into the camera for more than a minute.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee’s deepfake of James Talarico, the Democratic nominee in the US Senate race in Texas, is only the latest in a series of AI-generated creations from the national GOP campaign organization in the past year. But it’s the first featuring a phony version of a candidate talking in a lifelike manner for so long – an example of how far AI technology has come in a short time and an indicator of the direction attack ads may be heading.

“The face and voice are very good. There is a slight misalignment between audio and video, but otherwise this is hyper-realistic and I don’t think that most people would immediately know it is fake,” Hany Farid, a University of California, Berkeley professor specializing in digital forensics, said in an email.

The use of AI deepfakes in campaign advertising raises a host of ethical questions. It has also prompted some bipartisan calls for federal legislation or regulation on the practice, though those ideas have also faced pushback on First Amendment grounds.

*snip*