A new political attack ad against Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico left onlookers floored Monday for its use of generative artificial intelligence to depict the Texas Democrat as a doctor preparing to perform surgery on a young child.
“I think using an AI version of a candidate in a political advertisement should result in jail time,” wrote D.C.-based journalist Amanda Moore Monday in a social media post on X.
Put out by the American Principles Project on behalf of GOP Senate nominee Ken Paxton, the ad in question depicts a young girl plucking flower petals in a grassy field before transitioning to a shot of the same girl lying in a hospital bed wearing an oxygen mask. A doctor is shown instructing the girl to “keep counting,” and is later revealed to be a GenAI-generated depiction of Talarico.
A narrator in the ad can then be heard saying the following: “The trans industry preys on confused children,” almost certainly a reference to Talarico’s pro-LGBTQ positions.
Max Flugrath, a Democratic political strategist, called the ad “absolutely insane,” and characterized it as a “desperate” attempt to save Paxton’s sinking campaign.
“Absolutely insane to remake an ad about the threat of nuclear war to spread fake panic about the ‘trans industry,’” Flugrath wrote in a social media post on X. “They’re so desperate to make James Talarico seem extreme they need AI.”
The ad appears intentionally designed to mirror a 1964 campaign ad on behalf of Lyndon B. Johnson, which also depicted a young girl in a field plucking flower petals. Where the Johnson ad differed was its second half, which warned of nuclear armageddon rather than the “trans industry.”
And, while the ad may be “the Paxton campaign’s most egregious attack yet,” Mother Jones’ Sophie Hurwitz argued that history suggested it wouldn’t land with Texas voters.
“The original ‘daisy girl’ ad was effective because it was able to make people afraid. But if previous attempts to remix the daisy video are anything to go by, the American Principles Project may not succeed,” Hurwitz wrote in an analysis published Sunday.
“Bob Dole, in 1996, aired a version of the daisy video that concerned itself with teenage drug use. Audiences didn’t find that particularly compelling, and Dole lost. The Hillary Clinton campaign, in 2016, tracked down the actress who starred in the original video to shoot an ad for her presidential bid. Clinton lost, too. An atom bomb is terrifying because it is real, but an AI-generated three-year-old on an operating table is a manufactured threat.”
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