The Senate Republican campaign arm put out an ad of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer celebrating the ongoing government shutdown on Friday morning.
The clip, however, was a deepfake.
The video, published by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, features a grinning AI version of Schumer saying each day of the government shutdown “gets better for us.”
The quote is real — Schumer said it to Punchbowl last week. But the harshly lit video of Schumer in the Senate halls was generated using AI. The NRSC added a small watermark in the bottom right corner of the ad.
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The adoption of AI video in political campaigns is rapidly increasing across the political spectrum, and this is the latest example of political operations embracing the technology to attack their opponents. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers are concerned by the effect deepfakes could have on the midterm elections, but few of them have concrete plans for how to respond to attacks using AI.
A spokesperson for Schumer’s office referred NOTUS to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The DSCC did not immediately respond for comment.
While past NRSC AI ads have only managed to gain a few thousand views, the ad featuring Schumer broke through, gaining almost 500,000 views on X by Friday afternoon. The NRSC dropped this video as shutdown negotiations are at an impasse in Congress. And it juxtaposes the realistic AI video with actual video that is more reminiscent of a traditional political ad.
In an X post touting the ad on Friday, NRSC spokesperson Joanna Rodriguez said that “AI is here and not going anywhere. Adapt & win or pearl clutch & lose.”
Republicans are quickly adapting to using AI. The NRSC has previously published several ads heavily using it — from an AI music video published last month, to an ad attacking U.S. Senate candidate for Maine Gov. Janet Mills that was partly generated with AI.
It’s also not the first time Schumer’s image has been manipulated in AI videos.
President Donald Trump posted AI deepfakes of Democratic leaders like Schumer or House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Truth Social, saying things they didn’t really say in front of the White House.
“It’s been a concern for a lot of us,” California Republican Rep. Jay Obernolte told NOTUS last month. “Americans are still not nearly educated enough about the power of generative AI and about the need to question anything that they see on the internet before they determine whether or not this is true.”
Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar also told NOTUS last month that deepfakes in political campaigns “is a conversation that members are having on both sides of the aisle.”
“We know how real it can look. And pretty devastating things could be said with your face and your voice,” she added.
AI video generation has also become more convincing and easier to use in recent months. Earlier this year, a candidate in a local election in Texas used AI to depict one of their opponents in a political ad. While those images were still easily identifiable as AI, newer AI video generation models — like those released by OpenAI last month — can create realistic images that can be easily missed as AI by some users at a low price.
Some Democratic leaders are taking steps to adapt to their new reality. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom mocked Donald Trump and other Republican leaders with AI images online and candidate for New York City mayor Andrew Cuomo also recently posted a video featuring AI deepfakes of himself in different professions, which his campaign said managed to capture some attention in a saturated media market.
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