A North Carolina Campaign Made a Fake AI Video of Its Opponent
Republican North Carolina state Sen. Michael Lee ran a campaign ad that shows a fake, computer-made version of Jessica Bichler bending into odd yoga poses.
Bichler owns a yoga studio. She is running against Lee in a state Senate district in and around Wilmington in the fall 2026 election. The ad put those fake images next to statements about her views on policing and health care. It included a note saying AI was used. NPR
Lee said voters will get the joke. He told NPR that "voters in his district are smart enough to spot comedy and obvious parody when they see it." NPR described the ad in its Sept. 16 report, "As campaign season gears up, AI-generated ads are everywhere," about AI in ads during the 2026 midterms.
The North Carolina race is one of many. The Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks money spent on political ads, said at least 164 political ads across the country so far in 2026 were made or touched up with AI. Michael Franz is co-director of the project. NPR
Those ads are for different offices in different places. Fake AI ads have been used in Spencer Pratt's run for mayor of Los Angeles and in the Texas Senate race between James Talarico and Ken Paxton.
Rules for telling voters about AI are different in each state. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 31 states have passed laws that ban deepfakes, which are like fake photos or videos made by a computer to look real, or require a written note that AI was used. As of March 2026, there was no federal rule limiting AI in political messages in the U.S. Reuters On Sept. 12, 2023, two Democratic and two Republican U.S. senators introduced a bill to ban misleading AI ads in U.S. elections. It did not become law. Reuters
The numbers have gone up. NBC News reported on March 22 that at least 15 campaign ads with AI content had run since November. By May, the Wesleyan Media Project found at least $19.7 million in spending on ads known to be made or touched up with AI, out of $210 million in political ad spending over two weeks in 2026. Wesleyan Media Project The September count was 164 ads.
Scott Babwah Brennen is director of the Center on Technology Policy at New York University. His center studies computer-made images and sound, how they spread online, and how election offices deal with them.
The broader context here is about how campaigns work day to day. The Lee ad tests two ideas. The first is that a note plus clear parody meets legal rules and voters will understand it. The second is that AI can make TV-quality ads at low cost for smaller races. Neither idea has a settled answer under state-by-state rules, and with no federal rule, enforcement is split.
For counting these ads, the broader problem is finding them all. Wesleyan's numbers cover only ads known to be made or touched up with AI. Ads that were not labeled or were only lightly edited are harder to spot. Counts will likely go up as tools to find them get better and as disclosure reports catch up to what aired.
