{"id":160340,"date":"2026-02-11T19:05:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T19:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/160340\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T19:05:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T19:05:07","slug":"use-of-ai-in-texas-political-campaign-ads-sparks-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/160340\/","title":{"rendered":"Use of AI in Texas political campaign ads sparks debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

TEXAS \u2014 The closing shot for Dallas Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett\u2019s latest campaign ad for U.S. Senate is raising eyebrows for its possible use of artificial intelligence to show her surrounded by a large crowd. Democratic strategist and popular YouTuber Keith Edwards claimed<\/a> the image contains \u201can invisible digital identifier used by Google to verify content created by its AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

Crockett\u2019s campaign says the anime-style advertisement \u201cwas created through hundreds of hours of real craft and collaboration between creatives and union labor.\u201d\u00a0But she did not directly address whether her campaign used AI in the ad.<\/p>\n

On the Republican side, incumbent U.S. Sen. John Cornyn has altered images in his own\u00a0campaign ad\u00a0against challenger Houston U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt. He\u2019s shown Hunt as the book character \u201cWhere\u2019s Waldo\u201d in an attack on Hunt\u2019s absence from voting in Congress.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just need to adjust, in my opinion, to the AI era and try to increase AI literacy among the public,\u201d said Kevin Frazier, the director of AI Innovation at the University of Texas School of Law.<\/p>\n

A video of Cornyn\u00a0dancing with Crockett is a more obvious use of AI in political advertising. It\u2019s part of an ad from Cornyn\u2019s top\u00a0Republican\u00a0opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. It discloses the use of AI in the final shot.<\/p>\n

Frazier argues that all AI use should be disclosed in political advertising.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving some availability to know whether or not an image or an ad was generated by AI, but not going so far as to prohibit its use or to try to slap some heavy-handed law on it,\u201d he said. \u201cThis should be a political and values-based conversation that may vary from state to state.\u201d<\/p>\n

During last year\u2019s regular session, state Rep. Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, pushed for a bill to require candidates and political committees to disclose the use of altered media in ads.<\/p>\n

Phelan was on the receiving end of AI during a tough Republican primary,\u00a0as campaign mailers showed\u00a0altered images of him hugging prominent Democrat Nancy Pelosi. The bill received pushback from conservative hardliners.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is my goal to prevent someone from impacting or altering an election by using fake media that never occurred in reality, be an AI or deepfakes,\u201d said Phelan during the April 2025 debate.<\/p>\n

Phelan\u2019s bill made it out of the House with Democratic support but died in the upper chamber. Ultimately, Frazier thinks it\u2019s up to Texans to inform candidates of what they think is the best ethical use of AI.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t like the way someone\u2019s campaigning, if you think they\u2019re engaging in the 21st century\u2019s version of mudslinging, for example, then using your vote is very effective,\u201d said Frazier.<\/p>\n

Early voting in the Texas primary elections starts next Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEXAS \u2014 The closing shot for Dallas Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett\u2019s latest campaign ad for U.S. Senate is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":160341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[6329,1657,1658,132,134,133,6328,102,409,6363,223,287,82,27,835],"class_list":["post-160340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-app-capital-tonight","tag-app-latest-local-state-politics-stories","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-capital-tonight","tag-dallas","tag-election","tag-erin-davis","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-san-antonio","tag-texas","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}