May 2, 2023
Synthetic Ads, Real Elections: Inside the 2026 Midterm Deepfake Disclosure Fights
A campaign staffer told me her team now has a rule that would have sounded paranoid four years ago: every piece of video content gets a timestamped, unedited backup filed the day it is shot, specifically so the campaign can prove what is real if a synthetic copy starts circulating with the candidate’s face on it. That is a defensive posture nobody needed to think about during the last midterm cycle. Political propaganda has always relied on exaggeration, selective framing, and emotional manipulation. What changed heading into this year’s midterms is the raw material. Synthetic audio and video are now
