The rise of political slopaganda

This past weekend, I was at a podcast festival and some guy came up to me and was like, Sean Ramaswamy? And I was like, hell no. I'm glad I got out ahead of it because Vivek Ramaswamy, candidate for governor in Ohio, has given just about everyone in this country except J.D. Vance the ick this week with an attack ad against his opponent that dares to stoop as low as one can possibly go. It's not easy for a mother to say this, but Amy has a serious problem. She is a liar. She lies about her past. I'll spare you the details, but trust me, it's gross. And it reminded us here today, explained from Vox, that we should probably talk about the ads because my goodness, did you know these midterms are on track to be the most expensive election ever? And the first midterms to eclipse the previous presidential election in spending. And all that spending is on ads. So we're going to talk about the ads and we're going to start with what feels totally new, the ads made by AI. 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Go to Monday.com, the AI workspace platform. ♪ Today, next lane. ♪ ♪ Today, next lane. ♪ Scott Babwa-Brennan is the director of the Center of Technology Policy at NYU, and he's been keeping an eye on the AI ads this election season. He thought it would be all about the deep fakes, but it wasn't. We've been focused on another use of AI in election content, one that it seems is, is far, far more common than deceptive deep fakes, and that's what we call political slapaganda. Non-realistic, AI-generated content that is primarily designed to be attention-grabbing, funny, satirical, parodic, rather than deceptive. There've been some pretty famous examples out there. Probably the most famous was back in the primary. Spencer Pratt was a candidate for mayor of, of L.A., and there's a strange story here, but basically an unaffiliated filmmaker decided to use the campaign to show off his AI skills and created a series of ads that depicted Spencer Pratt, who is this reality TV star, basically as Batman. Please, I'm begging you. There's homeless drug addicts in front of the schools. My children aren't safe. And prominent Democrats in the states and in the country as, you know, Batman voters, and villains. Let's move the drug addicts closer. Bass already solved a crime. I endorse her. Next! And Joe Rogan is Commissioner Gordon. What? Yeah, they're bizarre. I mean, and one of them ends with the people rising up and throwing tomatoes at Gavin Newsom. This is a machine. If we want to burn this town to the ground. Pull through that! I feel so close. You can do it, Spencer! Right now! Ken Paxton in Texas and allied PACs have been spreading AI-generated content about James Tallarico, maybe the most sort of infamous as James Tallarico is wearing an apron and singing a version of My Favorite Things. Changing the gender of all your offspring. These are a few of my favorite things. We've seen it up in New York where Bruce Blakeman has created a series of ads depicting Kathy Hoffman. Kathy Hochul basically admitting to being corrupt. We're leading the nation and giving foreign companies energy contracts, which means your energy bills go up. But I get invited to all the best donor dinners now. But, you know, we've also seen this content not only kind of coming from the top, you know, political campaigns, political advertisers, but also just from regular people on social media. We've seen a lot of this sort of, you know, AI-generated slop coming from just regular users as well. Donald Trump was filmed last week appearing short of breath after descending the stairs to the Capitol. from Air Force One, renewing scrutiny of his health. Woo! The Wesleyan Media Project, they estimated last week that $137 million had been spent on AI-generated ads this cycle. That, of course, almost certainly underestimates the actual dollar amount. And, of course, we have to qualify that, that, like, $137 million is a huge amount of money. It is also absolutely, absolutely nothing compared to the $11 billion that's being spent on this cycle. And so, yes, you know, listeners have probably seen this content. They've certainly seen, I would imagine, news stories about this content, although it is still probably, like, a drop in the bucket of total election spending at this point. Is there an actual message in any of these ads? Or are they all just, as you say, like, slopaganda? Because at the end of the Spencer Pratt ad after the tomato, there's just this big, bold text that says, L.A. is worth saving, which, I mean, I guess, obviously, like, any city is worth saving if you're running for the mayor of said city. But, like, that isn't much of a campaign pledge. I've sort of thought about this content as this combination of a bunch of different sort of existing forms, right? It's a little bit like political ads, it's a little bit like digital memes, and it's a little bit like political cartoons or political satire. But I do, I do think that you're getting at the heart of the work that these sort of ads are trying to do. It's about reinforcing or supporting the inherent truth, and putting that in quotation marks, the deep stories, right? The narratives that campaigns or political advertisers try to communicate to voters. And these are not factual things, right? So the best example of this I can think of is, you know, in a lot of this content, we see Republicans, especially MAGA Republicans, showing themselves as having big muscles, as being, like, superheroes, physically fighting, these very traditional, you know, ideas of masculinity. Artificial intelligence in politics has become a big topic in Michigan in recent weeks, over instances like this AI image depicting a buff version of U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers, who is the president of the American Democratic Party, who has been a member of the Democratic Party for more than a decade. He's been a member of the Republican Party for more than a decade. You know, the vast majority of voters reported not liking it at all, even when it was disclosed. So, it's a little too early to have at least good sort of social science data on the effects, you know, that this content will have. But I think there is good reason to wonder if some of it might have this sort of backfire effect. Now, I'll say a couple of years ago, we ran a series of experiments. We were actually looking at the labels that are required by many states now on deceptive AI content in political ads. And we actually saw some indication that in some cases there might be this sort of backfire effect where when people saw an ad with a label, an attack ad in particular, they actually thought less. Like, you know, we saw a reduction in their assessment of, you know, of the creator of the ad more than, you know, a reduction in the assessment of the subject of the ad. What do you think we will learn from political slapaganda in 2026? And, like, do we have any options to make sure this doesn't get out of hand, that this doesn't become something that is, you know, deeply problematic in our elections going forward? I'm actually not that concerned about it. Okay, good. Like, at the end of the day, this is protected speech when it is not deceptive. And there are these examples that are sort of in between that, like, might be kind of deceptive. And you're right, like, the anti-Thomas Massey ad that showed Massey and AOC and Ilhan Omar, like, holding hands and checking into a hotel with fake security cameras. Yeah. But part of me believes that, you know, tools that allow people to express themselves in new ways politically are good. I am concerned about the $11 billion being spent on this election. I am concerned about the independent expenditures, right? Like, a huge amount of money. I'm concerned about that. I think it's very possible that the story of this election is not going to be the same. I think it's very possible that the story of this election might be, we saw this slopaganda arise, and, you know, mostly by Republicans. Republicans don't do that well, you know, didn't do that well in the election, I think, if we're looking back. And because with this growing sort of public opposition or concern about AI, I'm not sure that this cartoony AI-generated content is the right approach for the moment. Yeah, I mean, maybe, yeah, we can have another conversation in a couple years. Maybe I'll eat my hat on this one. But I'm actually not so concerned about this when there are these much bigger problems that I think we face. Well, I have good news for you, Scott. You know what we're going to talk about next on the show? What's that? The out-of-control spending. Okay, good. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. But wait, there's more. PTSD, insomnia, and more. You get to meet with a medical provider who can diagnose mental health conditions and prescribe you medication when it's needed. And because it's 100% online like your stepdad, you have a lot more flexibility. You can head to talkiatry.com slash explained to complete the short assessment and get matched with an in-network psychiatrist in just a few minutes. That's T-A-L-K-I-A-T-R-Y dot com slash explained to get matched in minutes. Talkiatry.com. Slash explained. Explained. And that's T-A-L-K-I-A-T-R-Y dot com slash explained to complete the short assessment and get matched with an in-network psychiatrist in just a few minutes. That's T-A-L-K-I-A-T-R-Y dot com slash explained to complete the short assessment and get matched with an in-network psychiatrist in just a few minutes. watching the money move so far this cycle has how it's moved from what we consider to be these very traditional competitive battleground states to redder states, you know, states that Trump won in 2024, really Republican territory, which speaks to the sort of defensive posture that they find themselves in here, which, you know, most incumbent parties do find themselves on defense in midterm elections. So that's not unusual. But paired with, you know, voter frustration with the tariffs with the cost of living with the war in Iran, we see this in Donald Trump's approval rating, you know, a lot of the competitive territory has shifted to Republican seats. Texas, Ohio, Kansas, even South Carolina have all come on mine late. And you see outside groups rushing tens of millions into those races to try to stand up Republican candidates. And if you live in one of those states and say, turn on the TV to watch some, I don't know, World Series baseball this weekend, what are you seeing in between the baseball? I think one of the most telling stats relates to advertising about President Trump. Depending on how you slice it, Democrats are spending five or ten times as much as Republicans are on ads that mention the president. While upstate families just want groceries that won't break the bank. Or when he voted against releasing the Epstein files covering for Trump and other powerful men. Which suggests, you know, they feel confident leaning into criticism of the president. Well, Republicans don't really want to talk about Trump. They'd rather talk about, you know, tax cuts in the one big beautiful bill act or, you know, their efforts to secure the border. Because when open border liberals were sitting on their butt, I stood up and did something to protect Georgia families. Cindy Hyde, Smith delivered the largest tax cut in history. Right now, we are sort of peak intensity for these attack ads, right? You've got, you know, in Ohio, Sherrod Brown has just been hammering John Husted, the Republican incumbent, over data centers, over Jeffrey Epstein. Husted received more than $100,000 from the billionaire friend of Epstein throughout his political career. Over, you know, cost of living, tariffs, the cost of gas. Washington politicians like John Husted haven't done a single thing to lower costs for you or your family. The flip side is Republicans are, you know, giving it right back, hitting Democrats over immigration policies, you know, warning about law and order, saying that Democrats are radical and soft on crime. We've also seen Republicans sort of recycle the attack line that Donald Trump used against Kamala Harris in 2024, talking about transgender policies. Probably recall seeing the ads, Kamala Harris is for they, not you. In 2026, that is, has been repurposed almost verbatim. You see ads in Texas. James Tallarico stands with them, not with us. And so both sides have attack lines that they feel good about and are really pressing hard here in the final weeks. And, you know, you can see it in the money, for sure. Just tens of millions spent behind some of these ads. How are voters receiving it all? Are they working? Are people just sick of how many ads they're being inundated with in, say, maybe these redder states where things are heating up? Yeah, I think this is the key question right now. All this money and all this effort is being put into making these ads and getting them in front of voters. But what are they actually getting for that money? And is it moving anybody? The story that I worked on last month relates directly to this, which gets to a really critical and I think underappreciated nuance of ad buying, which is that super PACs pay more for ad than candidates. It's in the law that candidates have to get the lowest available commercial unit rate for their ads. And it helps them, you know, buy ads more cheaply. Now, this is important because in 2026, especially in these blockbuster Senate races that we've talked about, Texas, Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia, Maine, Michigan, Republicans are leaning heavily on super PACs. This is what that Elon Musk money is going to. Whereas the Democratic candidates, by and large, are out raising their Republican rivals on a campaign to campaign basis. So what this means is that Democrats have more money to spend via candidates and Republicans have more money to spend via outside groups. Now, because candidates get more for their money, that means that even though we see Republicans outspending Democrats in several of these key battles, we're not going to be able to get more money out of them. We're not going to be able to get more money out of them. by, you know, 10 million or even twice as much or even five times as much. That money is not going nearly as far as the Democratic money because of how it's being spent. For example, in September, in North Carolina, Republicans spent more than Democrats, but Democrats actually got more airtime. And the same thing happened in Maine, where Republicans spent more than Democrats, but Democrats got more airtime. And it's just a really illustrative example of how top line totals are not all that they seem. And it's part of why I think Democrats have been able to weather the barrage of Republican outside money in these Senate races. Republicans, you know, by necessity have been forced into some really inefficient spending that is costing them, you know, hundreds of millions, and they have it to spend. But it is something that I think, you know, when you hear about, you know, a new, $40 million buy, it's worth thinking like, well, I wonder how many ads that that money is really buying, because it really depends on who's buying and when. Should people be worried about the amount of money and where it's going and what it's doing? It's a relevant question. And, you know, it's one that a lot of candidates actually take on pretty directly. You'll see candidates run ads complaining about the ads and complaining about mega donors. I mean, James Tallarico in Texas has produced campaign content reacting to Musk's, you know, aggressive intervention into his race. So, you know, depending on how you look at it, it's, you know, up to the voters to decide. And a lot of this information does get disclosed. But certainly, we're sort of in uncharted territory here with just how much money goes into these elections. And I think a lot of candidates are just sort of grappling still with the implications of everything that's changed in the last decade and a half. That was David Wright from CNN. And earlier, it was Scott Babwa Brennan from NYU. Danielle Hewitt made the show. Amin Al-Assadi edited. Gabriel Dunatov fact-checked. David Tadishore mixed without his pal. I'm Sean Ramesperam, and this is Today Explained. Are you a pet owner? Every six seconds, a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill over $1,000. Always an unwelcome surprise. That's where Fetch comes in. Fetch is the most complete pet insurance for dogs and cats. 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