By Hank Russell
The New York State Democratic Committee filed a complaint with the state’s Board of Elections (BOE) over a series of commercials made by Bruce Blakeman’s campaign using artificial intelligence (AI). The committee alleged that, in making these advertisements, Blakeman’s campaign “convert[ed] taxpayer dollars into campaign funds and then use[d] those public matching funds to support campaign activities that violate the Election Law.”
As previously reported in Long Island Life & Politics, one of Blakeman’s campaign commercials featured an AI-generated Governor Kathy Hochul boasting how she raised taxes on New Yorkers, took political donations from millionaires and let crime run rampant due to the eradication of cash bail. The commercial had an acknowledgement that it was created using AI.
In a letter to the BOE, NYS Democratic Party Chairman Jay Jacobs said Blakeman for New York “repeatedly disregarded [the] requirement for “candidates and political committees that use altered or manipulated imagery in campaign advertisements to expressly disclose that fact.” He pointed out that a new rule that went into effect in February that any political advertising featuring “‘materially deceptive media’ must include a statement that the image, video or audio ‘has been manipulated.’”
Jacobs said the commercials can be considered “materially deceptive media” if it:
- has a high level of authenticity or a convincing appearance that would make it visually or audibly indistinguishable from reality to a reasonable person
- depicts a scenario that did not actually occur, or that has been significantly altered from what actually occurred
- was created by or with software, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or other computer-generated or technological means, including by adapting, modifying, manipulating, or altering a realistic depiction
He went on to cite numerous media reports that these ads from Blakeman “rely on artificial intelligence to distort reality—specifically using Governor Hochul’s image but manipulating it to say and do things that she has not.”
“The State Board of Elections cannot permit a campaign to repeatedly flout the Election Law, and it certainly cannot permit that campaign to pull down public matching funds in furtherance of this subversion,” Jacobs said. “The Board and the PCFB should take all steps to ensure that the disclaimer obligations are applied consistently and that state dollars are not being used by campaigns in a way that violate[s] state law.”
In response to the allegations, Madison Spanodemos, Blakeman’s campaign spokesperson, said in a statement, “Kathy Hochul is so desperate to distract from her record of higher taxes and soaring utility bills that she’s begging Jay Jacobs to run interference. The facts about Hochul’s affordability crisis aren’t going away, no matter how hard they try to change the subject.”