A pro-Ron DeSantis super PAC used AI to generate Donald Trump's voice for a television ad attacking the former president, representing a new frontier in campaign advertising using deepfake technology.
Never Back Down, a pro-Ron DeSantis super PAC, created a television advertisement that used AI-generated audio to simulate Donald Trump's voice attacking Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds. The AI-generated content was based on a post Trump made on his Truth Social platform. The ad was part of a $1 million statewide buy in Iowa and was also distributed via text message and digital platforms. A person familiar with the ad confirmed that Trump's voice was artificially generated rather than actual audio from the former president. The Trump-generated voice did not sound entirely natural, highlighting the emerging use of AI-generated deepfake content in political advertising. The Trump campaign responded by calling it a 'desperate attempt' to 'deceive the American public.' This was not the first time Never Back Down had used AI technology, having previously superimposed fighter jets into a pro-DeSantis ad using AI-altered video.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI systems that inadvertently generate or spread incorrect or deceptive information, which can lead to inaccurate beliefs in users and undermine their autonomy. Humans that make decisions based on false beliefs can experience physical, emotional or material harms
Human
Due to a decision or action made by humans
Intentional
Due to an expected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed
No population impact data reported.