Two Senate races targeted by AI videos linked to Russia

Social media videos likely produced with artificial intelligence and linked to Russia are targeting two Democratic Senate candidates in the final stretch of the midterm election. The disinformation campaigns misused the names and photographs of real people to spread false narratives about Sherrod Brown in Ohio and James Talarico in Texas.

The first video targets Sherrod Brown, who is running against Republican Sen. Jon Husted in Ohio. The clip, which appears to include AI manipulation, depicts a fake newscast and features a photo of Haya Akbik, a former intern for Brown. Akbik told The Associated Press that the claims attributed to her in the video are completely made up. She described the use of her name and reputation as completely false and noted that it harms Brown in the process.

The second video targets James Talarico, who is challenging Republican Ken Paxton for a Senate seat in Texas. This clip is framed as a direct-to-camera confessional from a former student of Talarico. Talarico spokesperson JT Ennis stated that the most powerful people in the world are slandering Talarico with AI deepfakes, foreign bots, and conspiracy theories to protect their broken political system. Ennis added that these actors know they cannot beat Talarico with the truth.

The social media platform X removed the initial posts sharing these videos and suspended the users for violating platform rules. However, copies of the videos remained available online on Tuesday, with some having hundreds of shares. This persistence demonstrates the difficulty of containing disinformation in the days leading up to an election. Experts note that these new clips bear similar hallmarks to videos from the Russian network Storm-1516, which targeted Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in 2024.

Darren Linvill, a media forensics professor at Clemson University, identified that the accounts sharing the new material had also shared former content from Storm-1516. Hany Farid, a professor at Dartmouth College who studies AI deepfakes, analyzed the footage and found that the video targeting Brown was a fairly low-tech fake. He determined that the video targeting Talarico was likely generated by AI and is consistent with previous disinformation campaigns released close to Election Day. The Russian Embassy and the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Akbik said the video highlights the need for Congress to regulate AI content on the internet, calling the situation damaging.