Altered video of Washington County candidate goes viral
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A doctored video of Washington County chair candidate Nafisa Fai speaking in front of an upside-down American flag went viral last week, sparking outrage on social media and leading to calls for her deportation, according to the Oregon Journalism Project.
Why it matters: Fai's team provided OJP screenshots showing the flag was right-side up, but the viral moment signals how AI-assisted attack ads are putting words in candidates' mouths and creating realistic but fabricated scenes.
- It's a phenomenon testing election laws here and across the country.
Zoom in: Oregon Senate Bill 1571, passed in 2024, requires political campaign communications to disclose AI-manipulated images, audio or video realistically depicting someone saying or doing something that never happened.
- Violators face civil penalties of up to $10,000, though the law exempts satire and parody.
Flashback: Ads run by Jonathan Lockwood, who unsuccessfully ran to unseat Oregon Democratic U.S. Rep. Janelle Bynum, prompted a complaint and an investigation by the Secretary of State's Office this year.
- One ad showed Bynum and Gov. Tina Kotek with glowing red eyes chasing a group of scared children.
Yes, but: Whether the altered video of Fai violates the law is unclear, since not all misleading political content qualifies as campaign communication.
- The 26-second clip was posted by End Wokeness, a right-wing X account with 3.9 million followers, and amplified by other prominent conservative accounts, according to OJP.
- The original footage showed the flag right-side up. The clip also selectively highlighted several English phrases from her speech at a Minnesota event.
Between the lines: More than $137 million had been spent on 220 AI-generated or AI-enhanced political ads through Oct. 11, mostly by Republican-aligned advertisers, per the Wesleyan Media Project.
- Four states have laws prohibiting certain uses of AI-generated deepfakes in political ads, while 27 more, including Oregon, require some form of disclosure about their use.
- No federal law specifically regulates AI-generated political ads.
The big picture: An Axios analysis found numerous political ads partly or fully made by generative AI, which was sometimes undisclosed.
- Examples include deepfakes of Georgia U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff getting beauty treatments, a fabricated family photo of Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro boasting about accepting campaign contributions to fast-track data centers.
Go deeper: The AI attack-ad nightmare is coming true