| A Democrat standing at a podium while her supporters hoist signs declaring “NO GAS STOVES!” is a potent political message—particularly in a barn-red state with a libertarian bent like Indiana. But that scene, which debuted in the first ad of a $1 million buy for Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) in Indiana's increasingly competitive gubernatorial race, never happened. The ad was digitally altered, without any disclosure. It was unclear what editing technique was used, or whether it literally involved AI. But at a moment of rising anxiety about AI-fueled disinformation, the campaign is now blowing up as a rare example of a high-profile candidate using digital trickery to falsely attack an opponent. Braun’s campaign and admaker Jamestown Associates took a photo from the South Bend Tribune where his Democratic opponent, Jennifer McCormick, was speaking at a campaign rally with her own campaign signs behind her, and digitally altered them. (The campaign didn’t answer questions about how it made the ad.) In the altered ad, the supporters weren’t holding up campaign signs, but signs that featured a picture of a gas stove inside a red “no” symbol. Gas stoves were never talked about at the event. There’s no federal campaign law about deepfake images — but Indiana has one. The Braun ad is testing a relatively new state law, passed in March, mandating that deepfake images, audio or video, as part of a campaign message needed to have a disclosure, or else the target of them could sue. Indiana is one of 20 states with similar laws. Even if they don’t, however, the ad crisply highlights the complexity of regulating such material. After DFD reached out to the campaign Monday pointing out the digitally altered image, the campaign released a new version of the ad with a required disclosure noting that it contained images that had been digitally altered. When we called Josh Kelley, a senior advisor for the campaign, he said the first release was an error. “An earlier version was mistakenly delivered to TV stations and is being replaced with the correct version,” he said. But then the campaign decided to claim the ad as a kind of technological and ethical breakthrough: “Mike Braun is the first candidate to comply with this new law, which requires a disclaimer for any alteration from an original image, even though his opponent has altered his appearance in her paid advertisements without a disclaimer,” Kelley said. He didn’t stop there: Kelley also criticized the law itself, foreshadowing a debate that could continue as the technology proliferates. “The law seems to imply that any image or video not exactly as it was originally printed or aired could be a violation of the law, and clearly Jennifer McCormick has altered Mike Braun’s appearance and deceptively edited his speech in TV ads in an effort to mislead voters without the required disclaimer,” Kelley said. It’s not clear this was the case beyond the campaign editing Braun’s conversation with NBC’s Chuck Todd on abortion — over which the campaign laid some white static — a more run-of-the-mill campaign gimmick. OK, so now what? According to AdImpact, the ad without the required attribution has run more than 100 times — and was still in rotation at some television stations as late as Tuesday afternoon, an apparent violation of the law, even as Kelley said television stations had instructions Monday to not run that version. And another complexity: McCormick isn’t the only politician in the altered image—there is at least one state representative and as many as five other politicians pictured, meaning all of those candidates could have standing to sue Braun’s campaign under the new law. So far, none of them have done so. But politically, Braun’s opponent is trying to use it against him. “Braun’s team is so desperate to distract voters that they’ve stooped to using heavily doctored images. Disclaimer or not, it’s just dishonest,” McCormick campaign manager Kelly Wittman said in a statement. “Indiana has a law in place for a reason — Hoosiers deserve the truth, not deep fakes and dishonesty.” The campaign did not answer a question about whether it would sue. All of this exposes the uncertain terrain ahead. In this instance, it’s not clear whether the ad was in fact edited using AI, though the Indiana law is written broadly enough that other technology is included in the net. And it’s not at all clear the campaign’s use of the editing will actually work to its advantage. Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, a non-profit advocacy group focused on impacts of AI on democracy and society, said that even with the disclosure, the instance shows the potentially deleterious impact the new technology could have on democracy — and that the solutions are as imperfect as the threats are complex. “The disclosure is real here. It could be more prominent. But the fact that it doesn’t point out what actually is manipulated?” he said. “It sure changes the viewer’s impression.”
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