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deepfakes
Trump-Aligned PAC Drops Six Figures in Texas on 'AI Brainrot' Ad Putting Talarico in a Dress
"We need to make this type of undisclosed AI political advertising illegal yesterday," one tech journalist said.
Jun 09, 2026
Republicans are once again using artificial intelligence to attack US Senate candidate James Talarico. This time, they're spending big to air an ad featuring the Democratic nominee for Texas in a dress singing a song about transgender children.
It follows a previous video posted by the Senate GOP's official social media channels in March featuring an uncanny AI rendering of Talarico reading what they described as "extreme statements" he'd previously made on X (then known as Twitter) discussing his views on religion and support for the LGBTQ+ community.
Now, a Trump-aligned dark money group known as Citizens for Sanity is taking it even further. According to a report from The Daily Caller on Tuesday, the group has spent "six figures" on an ad campaign portraying the Texas state representative in a dress singing a parody of "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music about trans kids.
“Boys in white dresses with blue satin sashes. Girls dosed with hormones til they grow mustaches. Changing the gender of all your offspring. These are a few of my favorite things," Talarico is shown belting out in the ad.
The ad references comments made by Talarico in 2023 in which he celebrated the trans youth who had shown up, along with other activists, at the Texas state capitol to hold a protest in opposition to Senate Bill 14, which sought to ban transition-related medical care for transgender minors, part of a wave of hundreds of pieces of legislation proposed across the US attacking LGBTQ+ individuals.
Speaking on a podcast, Talarico said: “I love—I’m just going to say this because it’s on my mind—the trans children who showed up yesterday at the state Capitol to advocate for their humanity. They shouldn’t have to, but it was an inspiration to watch.”
As Talarico became the Democratic nominee in Texas, where he'll face off against Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton in November, official Republican channels have spliced the comments to portray Talarico as a creep.
One post in March, from the Republican National Committee Research account on X with 1.3 million views, quotes the interaction dishonestly, as follows:
HOST: "Something that you love that's not family or friends?"
TALARICO: "Trans children."
The ad is in line with others put out by Citizens for Sanity in 2022, when it spent a staggering $93 million attacking Democrats in swing districts. As The Guardian explained in 2024:
The group... flooded the airwaves in battleground states and swing districts with deeply offensive and often misleading ads. Some ads targeted LGBTQ+ rights and attacked “Biden and his radical allies” for supporting “the woke left’s war on girls’ sports” and the “woke war on our children”. Others pictured Latino immigrants and characterized them as criminals “draining your paychecks, wrecking your schools, ruining your hospitals [and] threatening your family”, declaring that “Joe Biden and the Democrats have erased our southern border.”
With AI deepfakes playing an increasing role in political campaigning—especially among Republicans—the group is discovering new frontiers for misinformation in this year's election.
The 15-second spot it plans to roll out across Texas makes no indication of the fact that it was generated with AI, nor of the fact that Talarico never actually uttered any of the words in the song.
Like many other states, Texas has a law prohibiting the use of AI deepfakes to deceive voters during elections. However, it would not apply to this ad, since it is limited to state races and only applies within 30 days before the vote.
Lawmakers in the state have introduced legislation to strengthen the law by scrapping the 30-day rule and requiring disclosures on paid political content generated with AI. But despite some bipartisan support, the reforms failed to pass through the GOP-controlled Legislature.
While this new Talarico ad would be unlikely to fool most voters, others—like the one released by the Senate GOP in March—are already realistic enough to influence even savvy viewers, explained Sandra Cai, the founder of Plurall AI, an AI deepfake and fraud detection platform.
"By the time a viewer questions what they saw, the impression is already made," she said in a social media post. "The 2026 midterms laid bare an uncomfortable truth: Disclosure labels are easy to miss and easy to ignore. The tools to produce these ads are cheap, fast, and widely available. Regulation remains a patchwork, often applying only in the final weeks before an election."
On the left, the Talarico ad has led to familiar bewilderment that such misleading material has not been outlawed.
"We need to make this type of undisclosed AI political advertising illegal yesterday," said the liberal tech journalist Taylor Lorenz.
And while some Talarico opponents boasted that they were "going to win the midterms by programming boomers with AI brainrot ads," others on the right said they were also disturbed by the trend.
"James Talarico is awful," said Frank DeVito, senior counsel at the right-wing Napa Legal Institute. "But this use of AI to generate a video of a political opponent saying or doing what he did not really say or do is not good."
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The Dangers of Big Business AI Pornography
Given the speed of AI’s development and its ubiquity, relying on companies to self-regulate is like closing the computer laptop after the deepfakes have been posted.
Mar 28, 2026
The explosion of AI into the marketplace has led to fears that workers, including white collar workers, will soon become obsolete; that Big Tech firms will control more and more property including intellectual property; that AI data centers will require so much energy as to overwhelm small communities, raise electricity prices, and accelerate global warming; and that the ongoing gathering of money, power,and software in the hands of tech billionaires will enable them to control political discourse and surveil the masses. Critics rightfully worry about AI upsetting social conventions, invading personal privacy, destroying jobs by making workers redundant, and challenging social mores.
When considered soberly, the risks of AI are the risks that accompany any new technology: reinforced racial bias and discrimination, economic inequality, deskilling of workers, and misinformation and manipulation that reflect existing power structures. Already pervasive society-wide gender and racial biases are reinforced in AI. The demographic of those programming AI systems are overwhelmingly white men, leading to biases in the development of AI tools, cybersecurity systems, policing software, and cameras.
AI Threatens Children
AI has become a powerful force even in the area of pornography, where the dangers that accompany its spread illuminate the risks of the diffusion of AI generally. The shocking impacts include deepfakes (the artificial use of images to embarrass or hurt others) and child abuse. Elon Musk’s “Grok” app is allowing users to undress anyone including minors, while “X” refuses to take action. The American Federation of Teachers left “X” because of its dissemination of “sickening” images of children in various states of nudity.
These worries are playing out against the backdrop of the Epstein sexual predator scandal that also involves modern technology, wealth, and privileged men. It is reflected in the unfettered development of pornographic applications, too many of which thrive on sexual exploitation of women and children. In the US the determination of President Donald Trump to avoid regulations of AI at the urgings of industry thus becomes a greater danger. The spread of risky AI pornography results not from the unfettered prurient interests of purveyors and users, nor from a lack of moral safeguards, but from a failure of governance and unwillingness to stifle profit in the name of free speech.
The exploitation of women’s sexual images without consent, coupled with the lack of robust oversight or age verification for mainstream platforms, perpetuates a cycle of harm.
In order to exert proper controls on the dark, abusive side of AI porn—and AI generally—we must understand what it is, how it developed, and how it might be controlled. Pornographic content has had a major presence in erotic and bawdy books and magazines over the centuries. You might say it became mainstream with Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (late 14th century), although the modern notion of pornography arose in the mid-19th century. The internet enabled a pornography boom by bringing it to any computer and eventually to any cell phone. If porn was expensive to produce, it generated high income. This stimulated further development of internet platforms where it is both pervasive and free. Rather than selling copies of videos, industry cleverly embraced online platforms to create multiple income streams through blind links, pop-up windows, pay-per-click ads, and by sharing of traffic with other sites.
A Big Dangerous Business
AI and such associated technologies as handheld electronic cameras and web pages have transformed the porn industry from being large and studio centered to being a cottage industry for virtually any tube site, small warehouse, or apartment. But Big Tech dominates. Of over 1 billion websites, of which less than 200 million are active, at least 4% are porn related, and perhaps as many as 12%. By usage, even more of the net is related to pornography, perhaps 30% of the internet’s data usage, with raw bandwidth usage six times larger than for Hulu or Youtube. MindGeek, the owner of several of the most visited sites including Pornhub, RedTube, and YouPorn, is a dominant force. Between 2013 and 2019, the number of visits registered in Pornhub grew threefold from 14.7 to 42 billion, and it is increasingly originating from mobile devices; in January 2024 alone there were 11.4 billion mobile visits worldwide.
The majority of users are male.
All of these visits to porn sites generate huge profits, well over $100 billion worldwide annually. For perspective: these profits are greater than those for Apple, GM, and other major corporations. By the 2020s the top porn producing countries were: the United States, at 24.5%; the United Kingdom, 5.5%; and Germany, Brazil, France, and Russia at between 4% and 5%. The vibrant OnlyFans site, in which performers own their own content, reported $7.22 billion in gross revenue in 2024. During the Covid-19 pandemic, as isolated individuals turned to the web for sexual comfort, OnlyFans gross revenue rose 118%, followed by annual increases of 16% and 19% in 2022 and 2023, respectively.
Technologies of AI Porn
The development of AI-generated pornography moved hand in hand with the rise of generative artificial intelligence. Much of the material is artificial, or at the very least enhanced. Many publicly accessible AI models generate text, audio, and images across the entire human spectrum of activities. They include ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek DALL-E, and Midjourney which have content moderation systems to prevent the creation of sexually explicit material. But a large volume of the output is deepfakes and child pornography, both of which have generated outrage and calls for its control, if not outright illegalization, and its rapid removal from the worldwide web. And moderation works only so far.
As quickly as new AI programs are developed, work-arounds to the restrictions are found. A separate market for so-called unmoderated or uncensored generative AI tools has also emerged which enables production of sexually explicit content through web and app interfaces. As examples: Dreampress.ai and MySpicyVanilla.com prompt erotic stories, while PornPen.ai, Pornderful.ai, Unstability.ai, and other apps enable pornographic images or videos. The exploitation of women’s sexual images without consent, coupled with the lack of robust oversight or age verification for mainstream platforms, perpetuates a cycle of harm.
Deepfakes and Child Abuse
By now websites dedicated to AI-generated adult content have spread into the mainstream where they may promote predation. They are first of all businesses dedicated to generating market interest and making profit, not in self-regulation. Drawing on huge libraries and data sets, they enable users to customize their preferences for body type; facial features; such enhancements as implants, tattoos, and piercings; kinds of encounters and positions; and fetishes. From the privacy of one’s domain, a user can thereby have sexual encounters, thinking he may do so without endangering others or himself.
Ultimately, however, AI pornography distorts human sexuality, because everything is on demand and seemingly risk free. It trains desire without reciprocity. It erodes the human capacity for negotiation, refusal, and mutual recognition. What looks like personalization of preference is actually the substitution of a screen for a living, feeling autonomous partner. Thus, AI porn is less about sex than about power: It teaches users to expect intimacy without vulnerability and especially without responsibility, and it facilitates abuse of women and girls.
Because of the ease of production, the amorality of website owners, and the lack of regulation, there has been limited progress in fighting deepfakes.
This terrible reality plays out with respect to deepfakes. Deepfakes make it possible for people to create naked photos or videos of someone, then to use the artificial pornography to embarrass, blackmail, or otherwise hurt her (him). “Nudify” sites have proliferated rapidly, allowing millions of people to create nonconsensual images. Apps like DeepSwap and Face Swapping, which enable users to swap out faces in a video with a different face obtained elsewhere, have proliferated since the emergence of generative AI three years ago. Digitally edited pornographic videos featuring the faces of hundreds of non-consenting women get tens of millions of visitors on websites.
Deepfakes are a “new method to deploy gender-based violence and erode women’s autonomy in their on-and-offline world.” In fact, in 2023, 98% of 95,820 deepfakes online were pornographic and 99% of those videos targeted women. To facilitate targeting, AI entrepreneurs created a website, MrDeepFakes, to which altered images have been uploaded for viewing and purchase. Deepfakes may be used as “revenge porn” when a jilted suitor determines to abuse an acquaintance by posting nonconsensual intimate AI images. As Paris Hilton recently testified on Capitol Hill about her experience with a private video gone public: “People called it a scandal. It wasn’t. It was abuse.”
As a result, there has been a sharp increase in crimes targeting children on the internet (online enticement, AI abuse, and trafficking). Reports of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) related to child sexual exploitation have skyrocketed from 6,835 reports to 440,419 in the last year alone. In the past few years in the US, 93.5% of individuals sentenced for sexual abuse were men, 67% of the cases involving child pornography were white men, and 95% were US citizens. In February 2025 Europol busted a criminal gang that was distributing AI-generated images of child sexual abuse online. Abusive behavior extends to secondary schools where students produce deepfake nude photos of their classmates with the help of AI. Boys are much more likely to generate a deep nude photo than girls. But because of the ease of production, the amorality of website owners, and the lack of regulation, there has been limited progress in fighting deepfakes.
Voluntary Regulation Doesn’t Work; It Enables Musk
In response to public outcry over perceived dangers of recombinant DNA research in the 1970s, the Cambridge, Massachusetts City Council voted to restrict work at MIT and Harvard laboratories. The vote, and concerns of molecular biologists themselves, led the burgeoning rDNA industry to adopt safety regulations on its own. In AI, too, the industry is by and large self-regulated to guard against misuse, disarm public interference, and ensure booming business opportunities. However, given the speed of AI’s development and its ubiquity, such a decision to self-regulate is like closing the computer laptop after the deepfakes have been posted.
A number of social media platforms and AI companies voluntarily introduced regulations and standards to limit hate speech, and combat incitement to violence against specific groups, genders, and orientations. More recently, many of these safeguards have been removed in the name of free speech and the right of the public to information. This has resulted in an explosion in hate speech, racism, and deepfakes. For example, after its acquisition by Elon Musk, Twitter took longer to review hateful content and remove it, an unsurprising result given that Musk fired thousands of employees who were responsible for moderation. He also has a misogynist view of women (whom he called “womb-creatures”), and he publicly saluted the Nazis who, he believes, merit a platform. Homophobic, transphobic, and racist hate speech on Twitter increased 50% under his ownership.
Similarly, in keeping with his quasi-libertarian views of free speech, Musk has refused to reign in Grok, his AI tool. Grok has a “Spicy” option that is being used to produce disgusting photographs of women and children in sexually compromising, explicit, and abusive situations. X officially allows pornographic content on its platform, too, but says it will block adult and violent posts from being seen by users who are under 18 or who do not opt in to see it. Shockingly, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth plans to integrate Grok into Pentagon networks, including classified systems, as part of a broader initiative to incorporate AI technology across the military. Does Hegseth have in mind the production of military deepfakes?
Self-Regulation Fails the Vulnerable
Having captured Trump’s fumbling mind, the massive AI industry has convinced the president to oppose meaningful local, state, and national laws to avoid “onerous” interference with commerce that may slow innovation. This lack of regulation has spilled over into AI and pornography. The technological billionaires who promote and sell AI applications in pornography may not understand or care about the abuse and suffering of women and children that has resulted from their apps. After all, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Howard Lutnik, Sergey Brin, Reid Hoffman, and many more techno billionaires in government and industry have been linked directly to the Epstein scandal. There is no suggestion of any wrongdoing in the heavily redacted files released by the US Department of Justice that these men committed sex crimes. But what do these contacts say about their attitudes toward women and children and what has been the result?
The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) has found thousands of AI-generated pictures online involving the sexual abuse of children. Such groups as the Sexual Violence Prevention Association have demanded stricter controls on AI image tools, swift takedown mechanisms, and legal action against those generating and circulating abusive content. But the number of realistic images, nearly all of which involve girls, skyrockets annually. Perpetrators easily download open-source AI models to their computers and quickly evade safeguards.
Confronting the purveyors of abusive AI and fighting immoral profit works.
Deepfakes might be addressed through such regulatory initiatives as the California AI Transparency Act, the Take It Down Act, the EU AI Act, and the UK Online Safety Act 2023. In 2024 the Czech Justice Ministry acted to amend a law that would make deepfake porn a criminal offense and make it easier for victims to defend themselves. The European Union has taken steps to address cyberstalking, online harassment, and incitement to hatred and violence. Unfortunately, enforcement remains inconsistent. For example, Scotland’s 2021 hate speech law criminalizes incitement to prejudice hatred, but excludes misogynistic hate.
Confronting the purveyors of abusive AI and fighting immoral profit works. Age and prior consent verification and other checks are always technically feasible to prevent abusive AI porn. Listening to pressure from anti-porn advocacy groups, Visa and Mastercard finally refused to accept payments from Pornhub, the world’s leading porn site, after a New York Times report that documented abuse and rape. This did more to slow Pornhub’s damaging practices than did years of content moderation. Ultimately, however, platforms face little accountability for hosting harmful content or for profiting from it.
Generating Safe AI Smut
CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, believes in treating “adult users like adults” with some age-gating, but little control. Many apps and sites hire armies of content moderators to catch illegal and offensive content. But we have seen how Musk’s decision to fire moderators led to an increase in violent hate speech. OpenAI thus is actively recruiting a “head of preparedness”—a well-paid human—to address the “real challenges” of AI models. He had in mind the “potential impact of models on mental health” and other models that can find “critical vulnerabilities” that attackers intend to use for harm. Altman’s announcement followed growing concern over the impact of AI chatbots on mental health, with lawsuits alleging that OpenAI’s ChatGPT “reinforced users’ delusions, increased their social isolation, and led some individuals to suicide.”
Like any other technological advance whose promoters have promised revolutionary changes in society and whose detractors have worried about the potential for moral, cultural, and social collapse, AI, in all of its applications, is a human technology, one that will be embraced and applied in human ways. The internet gives an open microphone to voices of anger and reason, to racism and equality, to raw pornographic images and erotic art with few filters. The Luddites of the early 19th century, the factory workers of the mid-20th century, and the more modern critics of robotics have long worried about their inevitable replacement by machines. Now AI has replaced pornographic models. Surely, the next steps require human analysis and intervention that machines, AI, and its billionaire owners can never provide.
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'This Should Be Illegal': Senate GOP Uses AI Deepfake to Attack Talarico
“Political deepfakes are a profound threat to our democracy, because there is no realistic way for voters to understand they are seeing fake representations,” said the co-president of Public Citizen.
Mar 12, 2026
In the latest example of Republicans using artificially generated deepfakes to attack their opponents, the Senate GOP’s official social media account has posted an attack ad depicting a synthetic version of Texas Democrat James Talarico, a state representative and US Senate candidate.
The video, posted on Wednesday to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) page on X, portrays a frighteningly realistic approximation of Talarico's (D-50) appearance and voice.
The state representative, who won the Democratic nomination for Texas’ US Senate seat in a primary earlier this month, is depicted reading an array of old social media posts that the NRSC described as “extreme statements praising transgenderism, twisting Christian beliefs, and advocating for open borders.”
The posts were all real. Talarico did indeed state, following a spate of mass shootings against minorities in 2021, that "radicalized white men are the greatest domestic terrorist threat in our country." He also did say that his office had added personal pronouns to official business cards out of respect for transgender Texans, that he believed God was "nonbinary," and that he was "the only teenage boy at Planned Parenthood's March for Women's Lives in 2004."
However, all of the posts are at least several years—if not more than a decade—old. The video also depicts its AI simulacrum of Talarico smiling and reminiscing fondly about the posts, which he never actually did.
"So true," he is depicted saying after reading the tweet about "radicalized white men." "I love this one too," he says before reading the post about "pronouns."
Aside from a small, translucent watermark in the bottom-right corner of the video, labeling it "AI Generated," there is no indication that the video is a fabrication.
While both sides of the aisle have dabbled in the use of AI to attack their opponents, Politico's Adam Wren has noted that deepfakes were not being deployed equally and have become central to the "approach" of the GOP in campaigns.
In October, after Republicans made a similar video showing a simulated Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) celebrating the government shutdown, Wren noted the frequency with which such tactics were being used by Republican campaigns at both the state and federal level:
Other examples of AI-generated advertising have also come from Republicans. An ad for Mike Braun, now governor of Indiana, last year used AI to fake scenes, without disclosing it. President Donald Trump’s account regularly posts clearly fake videos of the president ridiculing opponents...
The [NRSC] released one hitting Democratic Maine Gov. Janet Mills as she launched her Senate campaign, and one simulating a Democratic group chat.
Deepfakes have also been deployed heavily by social media accounts for President Donald Trump's White House to degrade opponents.
Earlier this year, the official account posted a photo of an organizer who’d been arrested during a protest against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), doctored to portray her uncontrollably crying, when actual photos of the event show her appearing stone-faced and stoic while being led away in handcuffs.
While more than half of all US states have legislation regulating the use of AI deepfakes for election-related content, the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen has said such content needs to be addressed at the federal level.
The group has called on the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) to designate the use of AI for deceptive political messaging as fraudulent misrepresentation and on Congress to pass legislation banning the practice and requiring AI-generated content to be prominently labeled.
Robert Weissman, the co-president of Public Citizen, told Common Dreams that the deepfake of Talarico "is a disgrace and the NRSC should put it down immediately."
"Political deepfakes are a profound threat to our democracy, because there is no realistic way for voters to understand they are seeing fake representations rather than real video," Weissman said. "This deepfake has an 'AI-generated' watermark, but it’s all but invisible–sort of like an admission of wrongdoing, more than an effort at transparency.”
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‘Dark, Bizarre Stuff’: White House Posts Deepfake Image of Arrested ICE Protester Crying
"All of us are on full notice that this White House feels no compunction about concocting obvious lies, concedes nothing when its lies are exposed, and should be presumptively disbelieved in all matters."
Jan 22, 2026
Continuing its bizarre and often legally questionable use of social media to publicize law enforcement operations, the official White House account published an artificially generated deepfake image of a protester arrested on Thursday by the FBI.
Earlier that day, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem had posted about Nekima Levy Armstrong, one of three people who were arrested for disrupting a service last week at the Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer and field office leader, David Easterwood, reportedly serves as a pastor.
Noem described Levy Armstrong, who leads a local civil rights organization known as the Racial Justice Network, as someone "who played a key role in orchestrating the Church Riots in St. Paul, Minnesota."
There is notably no evidence that the protesters engaged in or threatened violence, as implied by her use of the word "riot." Video shows protesters disrupting the service by chanting slogans like "ICE out" and demanding justice for Renee Good, who was fatally shot by an ICE officer in Minneapolis earlier this month.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the protesters had been charged under the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, which makes illegal any conspiracy to "injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate," people from exercising "any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States."
In her post, Noem shared a photo of Levy Armstrong being led away by an agent, whose face is pixelated to hide his identity. In the photo, Levy Armstrong appears stone-faced and unfazed by the arrest.
Hours later, the official White House account shared the exact same image—accompanied by text describing her as a “far-left agitator”—but with one notable difference. Levy Armstrong's face was digitally altered to make it appear as if she was sobbing profusely while being led out by the agent. Nowhere did the account make clear that the image had been doctored.
"Did the White House digitally alter this image of Nekima Levy to make her cry???" asked Peter Rothpletz, a reporter for Zeteo, who described it as "bizarre, dark stuff."
Sure enough, CNN senior reporter Daniel Dale later said the White House had "confirmed its official X account posted a fake image of a woman arrested in Minnesota after interrupting a service at a church where an ICE official appears to be a pastor," and that "the White House image altered the actual photo to wrongly make it seem like the defendant was sobbing."
Asked for comment, Dale said the White House directed him to a social media post by Kaelan Dorr, the White House deputy communications director, who wrote: "Enforcement of the law will continue. The memes will continue."
Posting artificially generated images of their targets sobbing has become a house style of sorts for the White House account.
In March 2025, the account posted an image, altered to appear in the style of a Studio Ghibli film, of Virginia Basora-Gonzalez, an alleged undocumented immigrant and convicted fentanyl trafficker, crying while handcuffed during her ICE arrest in Philadelphia.
In July, the White House posted an AI-altered photograph of Rep. Jimmy Gomez (D-Calif.) after he criticized an ICE raid in which agents arrested hundreds of farmworkers in Ventura County, California. They edited Gomez's congressional photo to make it appear as if he was crying, referring to him as "Cryin' Jimmy."
But the fake image of Levy Armstrong hardly appeared as a "meme." It was subtle enough that, without having seen the original, it was not immediately apparent that it had been altered, raising concerns about the White House's willingness to publish blatantly deceptive information pertaining to a criminal investigation.
Anna Bower, a senior editor at Lawfare, suggested that for the government to post a fake, degrading image of a criminal suspect could be considered a "prejudicial extrajudicial statement," which can undermine the case against Levy Armstrong.
The Trump administration has been caught in an untold number of lies, particularly about those arrested, brutalized, and killed by its law enforcement agencies. This includes Renee Good herself, whom members of the Trump administration tarred as a "domestic terrorist" within hours after her killing, without conducting an investigation and despite video evidence to the contrary.
Bulwark journalist Will Saletan said that with this deepfake post, "all of us are on full notice that this White House feels no compunction about concocting obvious lies, concedes nothing when its lies are exposed, and should be presumptively disbelieved in all matters. Nothing they say should be accepted without independent confirmation."
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'Safeguards? What Safeguards?': Grok's New 'Spicy Mode' Makes Nude Taylor Swift Deepfakes
"Deepfakes are evolving faster than human sanity can keep up," said one critic. "We're three clicks away from a world where no one knows what's real."
Aug 05, 2025
Grok Imagine—a generative artificial intelligence tool developed by Elon Musk's xAI—has rolled out a "spicy mode" that is under fire for creating deepfake images on demand, including nudes of superstar Taylor Swift that's prompting calls for guardrails on the rapidly evolving technology.
The Verge's Jess Weatherbed reported Tuesday that Grok's spicy mode—one of four presets on an updated Grok 4, including fun, normal, and custom—"didn't hesitate to spit out fully uncensored topless videos of Taylor Swift the very first time I used it, without me even specifically asking the bot to take her clothes off."
Weatherbed noted:
You would think a company that already has a complicated history with Taylor Swift deepfakes, in a regulatory landscape with rules like the Take It Down Act, would be a little more careful. The xAI acceptable use policy does ban "depicting likenesses of persons in a pornographic manner," but Grok Imagine simply seems to do nothing to stop people creating likenesses of celebrities like Swift, while offering a service designed specifically to make suggestive videos including partial nudity. The age check only appeared once and was laughably easy to bypass, requesting no proof that I was the age I claimed to be.
Weatherbed—whose article is subtitled "Safeguards? What Safeguards?"—asserted that the latest iteration of Grok "feels like a lawsuit ready to happen."
Grok is now creating AI video deepfakes of celebrities such as Taylor Swift that include nonconsensual nude depictions. Worse, the user doesn't even have to specifically ask for it, they can just click the "spicy" option and Grok will simply produce videos with nudity.Video from @theverge.com.
[image or embed]
— Alejandra Caraballo (@esqueer.net) August 5, 2025 at 9:57 AM
Grok had already made headlines in recent weeks after going full "MechaHitler" following an update that the chatbot said prioritized "uncensored truth bombs over woke lobotomies."
Numerous observers have sounded the alarm on the dangers of unchained generative AI.
"Instead of heeding our call to remove its 'NSFW' AI chatbot, xAI appears to be doubling down on furthering sexual exploitation by enabling AI videos to create nudity," Haley McNamara, a senior vice president at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, said last week.
"There's no confirmation it won't create pornographic content that resembles a recognizable person," McNamara added. "xAI should seek ways to prevent sexual abuse and exploitation."
Users of X, Musk's social platform, also weighed in on the Swift images.
"Deepfakes are evolving faster than human sanity can keep up," said one account. "We're three clicks away from a world where no one knows what's real.This isn't innovation—it's industrial scale gaslighting, and y'all [are] clapping like it's entertainment."
Another user wrote: "Not everything we can build deserves to exist. Grok Imagine's new 'spicy' mode can generate topless videos of anyone on this Earth. If this is the future, burn it down."
Musk is seemingly unfazed by the latest Grok controversy. On Tuesday, he boasted on X that "Grok Imagine usage is growing like wildfire," with "14 million images generated yesterday, now over 20 million today!"
According to a poll published in January by the Artificial Intelligence Policy Institute, 84% of U.S. voters "supported legislation making nonconsensual deepfake porn illegal, while 86% supported legislation requiring companies to restrict models to prevent their use in creating deepfake porn."
During the 2024 presidential election, Swift weighed in on the subject of AI deepfakes after then-Republican nominee Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image suggesting she endorsed the felonious former Republican president. Swift ultimately endorsed then-Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.
"It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation," Swift said at the time.
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Trump's AI Action Plan Includes 'Zombie' Moratorium on State Regulations
"Republicans and Democrats in Congress overwhelmingly rejected the wildly unpopular AI moratorium," said a spokesperson for Demand Progress, "Now Big Tech is doing an end-run around the democratic process by jamming it through via executive order."
Jul 23, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump's "AI Action Plan," announced Wednesday, revived a sweeping policy that seeks to prevent states from regulating artificial intelligence models.
The provision, which would have put a moratorium on states introducing and enforcing regulations on AI models, was stripped from the Republican reconciliation bill that passed earlier this month, after legislators voted it down overwhelmingly.
Critics have warned that the policy would make it impossible for states to prevent even the most perverse uses of AI technology, including the creation of non-consensual deep-fake pornography or the use of algorithms to make discriminatory decisions in hiring and healthcare.
But with backing from tech investors—including David Sacks, the White House AI and crypto czar, and Sriram Krishnan, the White House's senior policy advisor for AI—Trump is now reviving the "zombie" moratorium via executive order.
Buried within the 23-page document, titled "America's AI Action Plan," is a provision stating, "The Federal government should not allow AI-related federal funding to be directed toward states with burdensome AI regulations that waste these funds, but should also not interfere with states' rights to pass prudent laws that are not unduly restrictive to innovation."
This does not go as far as the initial proposal, which outright banned states from introducing legislation to regulate AI. It more closely mirrors a revised version proposed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) after the initial measure failed to pass muster with the Senate parliamentarian.
That revised policy instead threatened to withhold funding for broadband internet infrastructure from states that enacted regulations on AI. However, that version was still voted down 99-1 in the Senate.
Trump's executive order modifies this language somewhat to suggest restricting AI funding specifically. It also leaves room for states to pass "prudent laws," though it provides no indication of what is considered "prudent."
More than 140 organizations—including labor unions, consumer advocates, and tech safety groups—have signed onto a letter released Wednesday by the group Demand Progress, which calls on Congress to stop Trump from implementing the policy it has already voted to scrap.
"Bluntly, there is no acceptable version of an AI moratorium," the groups said.
"A total immunity provision would block enforcement of state and local legislation governing AI systems," they continued. "Despite how little is publicly known about how many AI systems work, harms from those systems are already well-documented, and states are acting to mitigate those harms."
In addition to the dangers of deep-fake porn, the groups cited evidence of AI chatbots having sexualized conversations with minors and encouraging them to commit violent acts. They also pointed to systemic racial and gender biases that have resulted in faulty health diagnoses when AI models are used by physicians.
"This moratorium would mean that even if a company deliberately designs an algorithm that causes foreseeable harm—regardless of how intentional or egregious the misconduct or how devastating the consequences—the company making or using that bad tech would be unaccountable to lawmakers and the public," the groups wrote.
In June, the Financial Times reported that "lobbyists acting on behalf of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta [were] urging the Senate to enact" the moratorium. According to data from OpenSecrets, these four companies alone spent nearly $19 million on lobbying in just the first three months of 2025.
Top Silicon Valley executives, including OpenAI's Sam Altman, Anduril's Palmer Luckey, and a16z's Marc Andreessen, have also publicly championed the moratorium.
Emily Peterson-Cassin, the corporate power director at Demand Progress, said that "this zombie AI moratorium continues Big Tech's relentless drive to tear down commonsense safeguards protecting Americans from half-baked 'driverless' cars and deep-faked revenge porn."
"Republicans and Democrats in Congress overwhelmingly rejected the wildly unpopular AI moratorium," Peterson-Cassin added, "so now Big Tech is doing an end-run around the democratic process by jamming it through via executive order."
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State Lawmakers Call on Congress to Ditch 'Ridiculous' Legislation Forbidding Local Regulation of AI
"The idea that the U.S. can afford to take a decade-long break from regulating technology that is getting more powerful by the day would be laughable if it weren’t so appalling."
Jun 03, 2025
A bipartisan group of state lawmakers told their counterparts in the U.S. Congress Tuesday that they hear frequently from their constituents about concerns regarding the rise of artificial intelligence and demanded that they not leave people across the country "vulnerable to harm" by passing a Republican-pushed provision to stop state legislatures from regulating AI.
The provision is part of the massive tax and spending bill that narrowly passed in the House last month and is now being taken up by the Senate.
Republicans hope to approve the bill in the Senate through reconciliation, which would allow it to pass with a simple majority along party lines. But at the state level, half of the 260 lawmakers who wrote to the Senate and House on Tuesday were Republicans who warned that the provision imposing a 10-year moratorium on state-level AI regulations would "cut short democratic discussion of AI policy" and "freeze policy innovation in developing the best practices for AI governance at a time when experimentation is vital."
"State legislators have done thoughtful work to protect constituents against some of the most obvious and egregious harms of AI
that the public is facing in real time," said the lawmakers. "A federal moratorium on AI policy threatens to wipe out these laws and a range of legislation, impacting more than just AI development and leaving constituents across the country vulnerable to harm."
The moratorium would tie state lawmakers' hands as they try to address new AI threats online, AI-generated scams that target seniors, and the challenges that an "AI-integrated economy" poses for workers, artists, and creators.
"Given the long absence of federal action to address privacy and social media harms, barring all state and local AI laws until Congress acts threatens to setback policymaking and undermine existing enforcement on these issues."
"Over the next decade, AI will raise some of the most important public policy questions of our time, and it is critical that state policymakers maintain the ability to respond," wrote the lawmakers, whose letter was organized by groups including Common Sense and Mothers Against Media Addiction.
Proponents of the reconciliation bill's AI provision claim that various state-level regulations would put roadblocks in front of tech firms and stop them from competing internationally in AI development.
South Dakota state Sen. Liz Larson (D-10), who sponsored a bill requiring transparency in political deepfake ads ahead of elections that passed with bipartisan support, told The Washington Post that the federal government has left state legislatures with no choice but to handle the issue of AI on their own.
"I could understand a moratorium, potentially, if there was a better alternative that was being offered at the federal level," Larson told the Post. "But there's not."
Congress has considered a number of bills aimed at regulating AI, but there are currently no comprehensive federal regulations on AI development. President Donald Trump issued an executive order aimed at "removing barriers to American leadership in AI," which rescinded former President Joe Biden's executive order for the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of AI.
Ilana Beller, a democracy advocate for Public Citizen, said the "ridiculous provision" in the reconciliation bill "is a slap in the face to the state legislators who have taken bipartisan action to protect their constituents from urgent AI-related harms—and a thinly veiled gift to Big Tech companies that will profit as a result of a complete lack of oversight."
"The idea that the U.S. can afford to take a decade-long break from regulating technology that is getting more powerful by the day would be laughable if it weren't so appalling," said Beller. "Members of Congress should listen to their counterparts at the state level and reject this provision immediately."
More than 140 civil society groups last month, as Common Dreams reported at the time, expressed their opposition to the provision, warning that "no person, no matter their politics, wants to live in a world where AI makes life-or-death decisions without accountability."
The Senate parliamentarian is reviewing the bill for compliance with the Byrd Rule, which stipulates that reconciliation bills can only contain budget-related provisions.
Republicans including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) have suggested they could introduce a separate bill to weaken AI regulations or preempt any state-level laws if the provision is stripped from the reconciliation bill.
"We welcome Congress's attention to AI policy and stand ready to work with federal lawmakers to address the challenges and opportunities created by AI," said the state lawmakers. "However, given the long absence of federal action to address privacy and social media harms, barring all state and local AI laws until Congress acts threatens to setback policymaking and undermine existing enforcement on these issues. We respectfully urge you to reject any provision that preempts state and local AI legislation in this year's reconciliation package, and to work toward the enactment, rather than the erasure, of thoughtful AI policy solutions."
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'Spineless': Democracy Watchdog Condemns FEC Refusal to Act on Election Deepfakes
"We need a clear FEC rule in place to deter fast-proliferating political deepfakes, which threaten electoral integrity and people's basic faith that what they see and hear is real—but the agency has utterly failed to deliver."
Sep 19, 2024
The Federal Election Commission on Thursday voted to forgo new rulemaking on the use of artificial intelligence in U.S. political campaign advertising, drawing sharp criticism from a watchdog group that said deepfakes threaten electoral integrity.
Public Citizen, the watchdog group, had last year petitioned the FEC to issue regulations clarifying that the use of deepfakes in political ads is illegal. The commission on Thursday formally declined to do so and instead voted in favor an anodyne "compromise" rule that states that artificial intelligence is subject to current regulations.
Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, said "compromise" was a "misnomer" and the FEC's position was in fact "compromised."
"We need a clear FEC rule in place to deter fast-proliferating political deepfakes, which threaten electoral integrity and people's basic faith that what they see and hear is real—but the agency has utterly failed to deliver," he said in a statement.
Fellow co-president Lisa Gilbert agreed, saying that "the threat of deepfakes is staring us in the face and unfortunately our elections agency has chosen to look the other way," and calling the decision "spineless and shameful."
It is OUTRAGEOUS that the FEC has not taken action to protect the upcoming election from political deepfakes.
Listen to @Rob_Weissman explain the threat AI-generated deepfakes pose to our democracy. pic.twitter.com/RCHWxKIMgy
— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) September 9, 2024
There are six FEC commissioners, including three from each major party, with a rotating chairmanship. Democrats have criticized the structure in recent years, arguing that Republican commissioners block meaningful regulations—four votes are needed to pass any rule—and have made the FEC toothless. They argue that a strong FEC is more necessary than ever given the massive increase in spending on U.S. elections that's occurred since the Citizens United ruling was issued in 2010.
For Public Citizen's petition, however, the problem was not just the Republican commissioners. Two Democratic commissioners, Dara Lindenbaum and Shana Broussard, declined to support the petition and instead helped craft the anodyne interpretative rule.
Democratic Commissioner Ellen Weintraub, the current vice chair, supported the petition and has commended an ongoing effort by the Federal Communications Commission to regulate AI use in political advertising. The FCC has proposed requiring a disclosure when AI has been used in the making of an ad, drawing praise from watchdog groups such as Public Citizen. The two federal agencies have sparred over the FCC's proposal.
Republican FEC members spoke out strongly against the Public Citizen petition at an open meeting Thursday, arguing that the commission had neither the authority nor the expertise to regulate an emerging technology. Current Chair Sean Cooksey published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal last month titled "The FEC Has No Business Regulating AI." He issued a 10-page statement on his opposition to the petition on Thursday.
If Congress hasn't yet granted the FEC such authority—a matter of interpretation of the law, which dates to the 1970s—it's possible that it could do so, as there is some level of bipartisan support for legislation on deepfakes. Multiple bipartisan bills have been introduced to prevent the use of AI in political ads, including one brought forth this week by Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), among others.
Schiff told The Associated Press the bill was "modest" and "really probably the lowest hanging fruit there is" in addressing AI misuse in politics. He and Fitzpatrick acknowledged their bill was a long-shot but said they would try to attach it to must-pass legislation later in the year.
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Taylor Swift Gets It, Says Watchdog: AI Deepfakes Are a Danger to Democracy
"The need for federal regulations to address this type of misinformation and prevent AI deepfakes from upending our elections and undermining our democracy has never been more urgent," said one advocate.
Sep 11, 2024
The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen on Wednesday applauded pop star Taylor Swift for using her platform and her endorsement of U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential race to go beyond simply expressing support for the Democratic candidate—choosing instead to also call attention to artificial intelligence and how it's been used to spread misinformation.
"Recently I was made aware that AI of 'me' falsely endorsing Donald Trump's presidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation," wrote Swift in an Instagram post announcing her endorsement of Harris.
Swift was referring to a false AI-generated image, known as a deepfake, that showed the singer-songwriter's likeness dressed as Uncle Sam with the caption, "Taylor Wants You to Vote for Donald Trump." Trump shared the image on his Truth Social account in August, along with fake images of people appearing to wear shirts that read, "Swifties for Trump."
The images were shared days after the Federal Election Commission's Republican chair, Sean Cooksey, had announced the agency would not establish new rules to prohibit political candidates or groups from misrepresenting opponents or issues with deceptive images.
Cooksey had said the FEC wanted to wait and see "how AI is actually used on the ground before considering any new rules"—a decision Public Citizen denounced as "shameful."
On Wednesday, Public Citizen co-president Lisa Gilbert noted that the way AI and deepfakes can and will be used has already been made clear, partially by Swift's experience.
"Taylor Swift—who has been a victim of both AI-generated election misinformation and AI-generated non-consensual intimate deepfakes—is correct in identifying the immensely damaging harms that could result from the spread of AI misinformation, including abuses of our elections."
In addition to the images shared by Trump, billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk, a Trump supporter, posted on social media a deepfake video that showed a manipulated image of Harris.
"The need for federal regulations to address this type of misinformation and prevent AI deepfakes from upending our elections and undermining our democracy," said Gilbert, "has never been more urgent."
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Fresh Warnings of Election Deepfakes After Trump's Taylor Swift Stunt
"The potential harms to our society that could result from such misinformation, including abuses of our elections, are wide-reaching and immensely damaging."
Aug 20, 2024
U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's posting of artificial intelligence-generated images suggesting pop star Taylor Swift had endorsed him earned him the ridicule of Swift's fans and journalists this week, but at least one pro-democracy watchdog warned that the incident served as a reminder that regulators must act with much more urgency to stop such behavior.
On Sunday, Trump used his Truth Social account to share the AI-generated images, known as "deepfakes," one of which showed Swift dressed up as Uncle Sam with the caption, "Taylor Wants You to Vote for Donald Trump." Others showed people wearing shirts that read, "Swifties for Trump."
Trump wrote, "I accept," in his post sharing the images, suggesting he was accepting a formal endorsement.
"The AI-generated deepfakes of Taylor Swift are yet another example of AI's power to create misinformation that deceives and defrauds voters," said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen. "The potential harms to our society that could result from such misinformation, including abuses of our elections, are wide-reaching and immensely damaging."
The images represent the latest escalation in Trump's fixation with Swift, who has made headlines over the last year with her record-breaking Eras Tour and who publicly supported President Joe Biden in 2020.
Far-right commentators melted down earlier this year as misinformation and baseless conspiracy theories spread about Swift and her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, being part of a "deep state" plan to secure a Democratic victory in November.
Swift has made her liberal political views well-known in recent years but has yet to announce an endorsement in the 2024 presidential race. She condemned Trump's violent rhetoric during nationwide racial justice protests in 2020, and accused him of "stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism."
"The AI-generated deepfakes of Taylor Swift are yet another example of AI's power to create misinformation that deceives and defrauds voters."
Her criticism appears to have irritated Trump for years, with the former president complaining earlier this year that a failure by Swift to endorse him would be "disloyal" because he signed legislation making it easier for musical artists to collect royalties from streaming platforms.
Political observers have speculated that this year, repeated criticism of so-called "childless cat ladies" by Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), as well as the Republicans' support for forced pregnancy laws, will not help the GOP ticket win over Swift's large fan base.
Trump's use of deepfake images comes after Public Citizen has spearheaded calls for the Federal Elections Commission to regulate AI-generated images; earlier this month, the FEC's Republican chair, Sean Cooksey, announced the agency would not establish rules prohibiting political candidates or groups from misrepresenting opponents or issues with deceptive images.
Prior to Trump sharing the fake images of Swift and her fans on Sunday, billionaire Tesla owner Elon Musk had posted a deepfake video featuring a manipulated image of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
Public Citizen co-president Robert Weissman said earlier this month that political deepfakes "are rushing at us, threatening to disrupt electoral integrity."
"Requiring that political deepfakes be labeled doesn't favor any political party or candidate," he said. "It simply protects voters from fraud and chaos."
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