More politicians are using Artificial Intelligence in campaign ads leading up to this year’s midterm elections.
The Wesleyan Media Project is a Connecticut-based nonpartisan research project that has tracked and analyzed political ads for 16 years. But researchers said since the start of the year, they have seen an uptick in the use of artificial intelligence.
Erika Franklin Fowler, Ph. D. is the co-director of the project and a government professor at Wesleyan University. Fowerler said the team was able to identify a range of AI use in ads from both parties in races across the country.
“We’ve identified almost 170 AI generated political ads this year and that’s just through early September. That has had at least $80 million dollars of spending behind it,” Fowler said.
Some ads include satirical depictions of candidates that are meant to poke fun, Fowler said. While other examples include hyperrealistic deepfakes that feature an AI generated depiction of candidates both as an attack ad or using AI to make them look more favorable.
According to the report, that exact number is164 political ads. But Fowler expects that number will accelerate in the weeks leading up to the election. The initial report in May identified just 33 ads, totaling about $20 million in spending. The real time tracking has allowed the team to compare findings.
“It’s a multipronged system but it’s also really important to say that this is absolutely an undercount of AI used in campaigns because in a lot of ways there’s little disclosure,” Fowler said.
Almost 70% of the ads and 78% of the spending did not have a disclaimer that disclosed the use of AI tools. Fowler said that’s because there are no federal laws that require disclosure. Some states have passed laws that require a disclaimer for political advertisements that contain AI generated content. While some laws ban the use of deepfakes directly.
In 2025, both Connecticut and New York introduced bills that sought to ban the creation of election related deepfakes within a certain window of time before an election. In New York the legislation became law. Despite the passage of several AI related bills in Connecticut, none were restrictions on election related deepfakes.
“There are a lot of barriers to putting regulations in place but I do think, what we’re seeing already at the state level do see already at the state level and in the national conversation, along with public opinion ,” Fowler said. “I would imagine that there would be at least some policy conversations about potential for AI regulation in advertising.”