The video opens with the Hollywood sign engulfed in flames.
Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles sits on a throne, her face painted like that of the Joker. She’s flanked by Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Cut to Spencer Pratt, the MTV reality television star turned Los Angeles mayoral candidate, styled as Batman with “SP” on his chest, leading an angry crowd that throws rotten tomatoes at the politicians.
“LA is worth saving,” reads a caption at the end. “Vote Spencer Pratt.”
This was no normal campaign advertisement. It wasn’t paid for by the candidate or a political action committee. It didn’t run on television. And it was made with A.I. But it quickly went viral after being posted on X on May 5, boosted by Jeb Bush, who hailed it as “maybe the best political ad of the year.”
A.I. videos have played a critical role in elevating Mr. Pratt to a serious contender in the June 2 primary. They have helped him seize attention from opponents who have been desperately trying to reach voters in the nation’s second largest media market.
And since the video first appeared, Mr. Pratt has raised more than $600,000 in donations of $1,000 or more. That’s more than 10 times what Ms. Bass collected over the same period. Combined with what was seen as a solid performance in the race’s only televised debate, particularly in comparison to his closest competitor, the ads and money could help Mr. Pratt finish at least second in the mayoral primary, which would set him up for a runoff against Ms. Bass in November.
That momentum speaks to the disruptive power of artificial intelligence when it comes to politics, and it has already sparked imitators attempting to boost their own political futures with cheap and fast videos made with artificial intelligence.
“Pratt videos are the new it thing,” said Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican strategist and co-director of the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California. He is not backing a candidate in the race.
Mr. Pratt rose to fame as a much-loathed antagonist on “The Hills,” a reality show that ran from 2006 to 2010. But he has fueled his mayoral campaign with civic outrage after his house burned to the ground in the Palisades fire last year. A registered Republican, he has channeled his anger and frustration into broadsides against Ms. Bass and, more generally, Democrats who have managed the city for years.
That message resonated with Charles Curran, a Los Angeles filmmaker who made the Joker video and has since produced several other A.I. spots, including one casting Ms. Bass as Darth Vader from “Star Wars,” and, most recently, as the Marvel comics villain Thanos that Mr. Pratt has amplified on his own social media accounts.
Mr. Curran did not respond to requests for comment, and the Pratt campaign said in a statement that it has “no input on what fans make with A.I.” Mr. Curran told The New York Times last month that it took him just 30 minutes using a pair of A.I. tools made by Anthropic and the Chinese company ByteDance to produce a viral video about the war in Iran.
“It’s not inherently difficult,” Mr. Curran said, “which is why I think you’ll see a lot more of this.”
Another supporter, Adrian E. Alvarez, has used the technology to make music videos in Spanish and English mocking Ms. Bass, which he posts on X under the handle Latinos Por Pratt. One depicts the mayor in a trash bin being pushed by Mr. Pratt. In an interview, Mr. Alvarez said he wasn’t paid by the campaign and that he made the videos, which have also gone viral, because he hopes Mr. Pratt will win.
Their success has had a flywheel effect, with an army of fans now competing to produce the catchiest and most outrageous videos supporting his campaign. They share and cross-promote a seemingly endless stream of computer-generated clips boosting Mr. Pratt and bashing his opponents with depictions of Los Angeles as a dirty, dangerous wasteland.
One released on Sunday depicts women at a fitness studio confiding to one another that they secretly plan to vote for Mr. Pratt. Like many other videos promoting the candidate, it does not note that it was made with artificial intelligence.
Nathaniel Persily, co-director of the Stanford Law A.I. Initiative, said that the posts were part of a larger trend that has increasingly put A.I. at the center of campaign strategies.
Earlier this year, Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general and a Republican Senate candidate, released an A.I.-generated video in which two of his opponents were shown dancing with each other. During the 2025 New York City mayoral race, Andrew Cuomo’s campaign posted an A.I. video depicting Zohran Mamdani’s supporters as drug dealers, domestic abusers and pimps.
As the attack on Mr. Mamdani did, the A.I. videos often venture into offensive territory. In the Batman clip boosting Mr. Pratt, Mr. Newsom’s likeness makes a crude sexual remark, and the phony Ms. Harris drinks out of a bottle of cheap liquor. The approach is strongly reminiscent of that adopted by President Trump, who regularly shares A.I. memes and videos on social media, including a racist clip in February that depicted former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, as apes.
“The more ubiquitous that A.I. is in political life, the more that people will find reasons to doubt anything that they see with their lying eyes,” Mr. Persily said. “From a democracy perspective, the fact that people will be less trusting of true things is maybe a greater democracy danger.”
To date, Mr. Pratt hasn’t bought a single minute of airtime, according to media tracking firm AdImpact, while his opponents have spent close to $2 million on traditional television and radio commercials.
The few ads his campaign has produced itself have been distributed for free on social media. To date, perhaps Mr. Pratt’s largest advertising expenditure appears to have been a smattering of yard signs, some merch and a series of billboards seen this month that seem to be designed with A.I.
Mr. Pratt’s campaign has said little about the role A.I. has played in boosting his campaign. It said that it was not involved with the videos created by his fans, and did not provide more information on the use of A.I. to design the billboards.
The attention, worthy or not, has brought in a gusher of cash. More than 300 people have given the maximum allowable primary donation of $1,800 to the Pratt campaign, records show, including contributions from Hollywood royalty like Brian Grazer, a film producer; the Universal Music chief executive Lucian Grainge; and real estate barons, including Jay Luchs.
But more than two-thirds of that money is coming from people who can’t actually vote in Los Angeles. Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, Bitcoin celebrities and identical twins who famously feuded with Mark Zuckerberg, each donated the maximum but live in New York, as does Daniel Loeb, a hedge-fund billionaire who donated the maximum after the Joker video was published.
And no matter how many times Meghan McCain or Joe Rogan say that Mr. Pratt is their choice, the reality is that they can’t vote here.
“People are enjoying them,” Mr. Murphy said of the videos, “but are those at all the same people who are going to be voting to decide who will be the mayor of Los Angeles?”
The city hasn’t had a Republican mayor since Richard Riordan in 2001. Despite facing legitimate problems like homelessness and lingering resentment over how the city responded to the fire that devastated the Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles remains a heavily Democratic city, with 55 percent of voters registered as Democrats and about 15 percent registered as Republicans.
Doug Herman, Ms. Bass’s campaign strategist, noted that, paradoxically, the more enthusiasm Mr. Pratt generates among the MAGA base, the more he risks alienating himself to the actual voters he would need to win over in a runoff.
“He clearly has a ceiling,” Mr. Herman said. “The question is whether he can pierce it by being effective online.”
Ms. Bass has generally led in mayoral polls this year, but Nithya Raman, a progressive city councilwoman, has been competitive with Mr. Pratt for the second spot in the runoff. Ms. Raman criticized Mr. Pratt for relying on A.I. while so many in the entertainment industry are concerned about being displaced by the technology.
“Hollywood jobs are being devastated by A.I.,” Ms. Raman said in a statement. “Meanwhile Spencer Pratt is using his platform to promote A.I.-generated content, amplifying the very technology replacing the workers he claims to care about.”
Still, other political actors in Los Angeles seem to have taken inspiration from the Pratt campaign. Last week, a political action committee supporting a candidate for Los Angeles city attorney posted an A.I.-generated video that, like those supporting Mr. Pratt, depicted a dirty and inhospitable city. “Enough is enough,” the video concludes before cutting to a screen noting the ad was “generated or substantially altered using A.I.”
Over 20 states, including California, currently have laws regulating highly realistic A.I.-generated political content, better known as deepfakes. Those laws also require disclosure of the use of artificial intelligence. By reposting other people’s videos, Mr. Pratt may have found a workaround, though some lawmakers believe he is still responsible for disclosure.
Rob Flaherty, who served as deputy campaign manager for Ms. Harris during her 2024 presidential run, acknowledged that Mr. Pratt had tapped into something powerful, calling the videos “fun, irreverent and entertaining.”
But he cautioned that being popular online is not the same as being popular with a specific cohort of voters. “He’s a content machine that happens to be running for mayor.”
Jill Cowan contributed reporting from Los Angeles.
Madison Malone Kircher is a Times reporter covering internet culture.
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