Fully AI-generated political TV ad takes aim at North Carolina governor's race

Political advertising has never been known for its honesty or accuracy. Generative artificial intelligence appears to be poised to take that to the next step.

A fully AI-generated campaign ad will begin airing next week on broadcast, cable and streaming services. It’s believed to be the first of its kind to appear on the state's airwaves. It features a parody version of Republican candidate Mark Robinson, uttering statements the candidate has actually made in other venues, from social media to religious services.

Its creator, Democratic donor Todd Stiefel, wants to draw voters' attention to those statements by using AI to recreate Robinson saying them. He started his own political action committee Americans for Prosparody, which he says is on track to spend about $1 million on this campaign.

“He really said the civil rights movement is crap,” Stiefel said. “He really said and believes the Affordable Care Act is an effort to enslave people. These are really outrageous, hard things.”

Stiefel — a Raleigh investor who, according to state campaign finance records, has donated at least $19,000 to Stein’s campaigns since 2016 — made headlines last year with a parody website, “Mark Rottenson,” which featured a synthesized voice reading made-up quotes from an imaginary memoir.

Robinson spokesman Mike Lonergan on Tuesday criticized Stiefel for those earlier attacks. “Stiefel’s work is full of fake clips and outrageous lies typical of the smear campaign Josh Stein and his Democrat allies are running against Mark Robinson, and North Carolina voters will see right through it,” Lonergan said.

Stein, the state’s sitting attorney general and the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, has been highly critical of Robinson in the past, but his campaign took Robinson’s side in February criticizing the “Mark Rottenson” push for its use of AI, a position it reiterated on Tuesday.

“Using AI in campaign advertising is the wrong approach,” Stein campaign manager Jeff Allen said in an emailed statement that also criticized Robinson’s stances on abortion and education funding.

Stiefel said his latest ad campaign is taking a different approach.

“We realized so many people weren't getting who we were referencing that we kind of had to pivot over to Mark Robinson more directly,” Stiefel told WRAL News.

He’s hoping the new ads, which he described as “over the top,” can reach voters who tune out most other political ads.

“We are hoping to cross media silos by using humor to get to people and have them laugh and be entertained,” Stiefel said.

But the goal of the ad campaign isn’t a punchline to Stiefel.

“The overall goal is to save American democracy from extremists,” he said. “The goal is to defeat Mark Robinson, as well as to actually get him to lose so badly that we get reverse coattails, I believe it's called, and pull down Trump and actually flip the entire national election by having Trump lose in North Carolina.”

Using AI in a campaign ad is not against any law at the federal or state level. But Elon University journalism professor Amanda Sturgill says using AI to impersonate a politician is ethically problematic.

“The problem really is that it can be deeply confusing to people, particularly when you're using a technology that makes it sound like it is the candidate themselves,” Sturgill told WRAL.

While Stiefel said his ads are “covered in disclaimers,” Sturgill pointed out not everyone reads the fine print.

She says voters will need to become even savvier media consumers because technology is making it easier and easier to make ads like this.

“In the past,” Sturgill said, “if you wanted to tediously sit there and go through hours of someone's speeches and cut up their words and expertly audio-edit them together, you could still make people say things, but now it's basically a free app, right? Anybody can do that. So the speed at which you can create bad information is greatly increased.”

Stiefel insists his ad is parody, not misinformation.

“I totally think this is ethical,” he told WRAL. “It's using his words to criticize him, which to me is completely fair game.”