PODCAST:
June 17, 2026 ~ Chris Renwick and Lloyd Jackson talk with Cliff Lampe, a professor at the University of Michigan, about deepfakes in political campaigns. They discuss how deepfakes confuse voters and erode trust.
In a new age of AI technology, it can be more difficult to determine what is real online. This is proving to complicate election seasons.
AI tools are being used at increasing rates to create political “deepfake” political ads, or AI-generated videos and voices of a person’s likeness. One recent example came out of Minnesota, where Senate candidate Peggy Flanagan called out an attack ad from a super PAC supporting her primary opponent, Angie Craig, claiming the ad was a deepfake. The PAC is not associated with Craig’s campaign.
“Lots of people look at AI and don’t necessarily have the AI literacy to say this is a fake ad, and it’s causing a lot of confusion in that way,” Cliff Lampe, a professor at the University of Michigan, told WJR. “The other danger here is that everybody thinks everything is AI, so there’s no such thing as truth anymore, right? Maybe a bad actor can claim, ‘Oh, that was AI,’ even if they’re caught on video, or that a campaign gets caught in some sort of bad action, and all they do is claim it was an AI hoax.”
Another potential issue campaigns could have with AI is upsetting voters by using AI-generated ads.
“There are many people with negative views of AI, so if you’re putting out what people call AI slop, then it can turn people against your campaign if you’re seen as being too friendly with AI,” Lampe said.
