(The Center Square) \u2014 Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman is using artificial intelligence to “distort reality” in his bid to topple incumbent New York Gov. Kathy Hochul in the November elections, according to a complaint filed by the state’s Democratic Party.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a complaint filed Monday with the New York State Board of Elections, New York Democratic Committee Chairman Jay Jacobs claimed that the Blakeman campaign is “playing fast-and-loose” with a state election law that requires candidates and committees to disclose if they use altered or manipulated imagery in political advertisements.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Notwithstanding the clear statutory mandate, the Blakeman for New York committee has repeatedly disregarded that requirement,” Jacobs wrote in the letter. “The Blakeman campaign has been proud to convert taxpayer dollars into campaign funds, and then use those public matching funds to support campaign activities that violate the election law.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jacob’s complaint said media reports suggested there is “no consistency” in the disclosures about AI-generated content in Blakeman’s political advertising.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He called on the board and the New York public Campaign Finance Board Enforcement unit to “take all steps to assure that the disclaimer obligations are applied consistently, and that state dollars are not being used by campaigns in a way that violate state law.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Blakeman, 70, a Nassau County Executive, is making his first run for governor and recently tapped Madison County Sheriff Todd Hood as his running mate for lieutenant governor.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He is challenging Hochul, a Democrat, who is seeking re-election to a second full term with her running mate, former New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Blakeman didn’t immediately respond to the allegations in the complaint but posted an AI-generated video on his social media campaign account Monday portraying New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani as a clerk in a city-run grocery store asking for photo identification from a customer buying milk.<\/p>\n
“Identification please, not to vote, but for milk,” the Mamdani likeness says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“That’s not fair. I don’t need my ID to vote. Why should I need it for milk?” the customer asks in the ad.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“It’s not about fairness, it’s about control,” the AI-generated Mamdani responds.<\/p>\n
Another AI-generated video posted by Blakeman’s campaign portrayed Gov. Kathy Hochul walking along a city street lined with homeless encampments, talking about raising the state’s taxes and energy prices.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jacobs alleged in his ethics complaint that those ads are an attempt to “distort reality” by “specifically using Gov. Hochul’s image but manipulating it to say and do things she has not.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
“The State Board of Elections cannot permit a campaign to repeatedly float the election law, and it certainly cannot permit that campaign to pull down public matching funds in furtherance of this subversion,” Jacobs wrote in the complaint.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(The Center Square) \u2014 Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman is using artificial intelligence to “distort reality” in his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[416,9,24,1411,63,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-318131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-elections","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new_york","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}