AI-Generated Election Videos Circulate in Brazil's Presidential Race
AI-generated election videos are circulating in Brazil, and some of them present fake opinion polls or invented voters attacking candidates, in segments styled to look like news reports, the New York Times reported on October 21, 2026. The paper asked whether such material could sway the vote in the country's presidential contest.
The videos are made with artificial intelligence (AI) tools, which can generate realistic images, voices and footage. According to the same report, platforms such as YouTube use biometric identification, a method of recognising people by their physical traits, to catch and remove electoral deepfakes. A deepfake is a manipulated video or audio clip that convincingly shows people or events that did not happen.
Brazil's top electoral court, the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), has been setting rules for the campaign. In February 2024 it banned the use of AI to create and spread false content in elections, and it required a notice whenever AI was used in campaign material. In April 2026 the court published a guide to the rules for the 2026 campaign, saying the regulation aims to stop manufactured or manipulated content from spreading notoriously false facts.
On September 1, 2026, the TSE set out the criteria for classifying content as a deepfake in the 2026 elections. Reuters reported the same day that the court's most serious concern was deepfakes that convincingly depict events that never happened. The news agency also reported that AI-generated content was filling voters' social media feeds, and that AI chatbots were challenging regulators' ability to limit misinformation.
The technology has also figured in disputes between the parties. On October 14, the New York Times reported that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had accused Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, of helping his right-wing opponents. According to the same report, Meta had approved political ads containing AI images that showed the head of the electoral court falsely making a declaration, but the ads were ultimately not published. The New York Times report did not describe a response from Meta in the text available to this story.
Former president Jair Bolsonaro is a central figure in the campaign. Reuters reported on July 28 that Bolsonaro was under house arrest for plotting against democracy and was barred from this year's election. The same report said an AI-generated avatar of him allowed him to keep a presence in the campaign.
The campaign has also been shaped by a corruption scandal. The New York Times reported on September 24 that the scandal was shaking up the presidential race, and that Justice Moraes had ordered social media platforms to take down content.
