Act 247,<\/a> which took effect earlier this year.<\/p>\n\u201cThis was certainly one of the things that we were afraid of when we passed this law,\u201d Matayoshi said. \u201cPeople are justifiably outraged at this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Berning responds<\/p>\n
In a lengthy email defending his candidacy as legitimate, Berning said his original claim that Trask was a model was inaccurate. He admitted the video was AI-generated and said it was not intended to represent a specific real Hawaiian woman.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am saddened that it created frustration for the family of the woman depicted,\u201d Berning said. He said the ad will not continue running as it was and is being reworked.<\/p>\n
Part of a larger pattern<\/p>\n
The ad\u2019s use of a graphic fetus photo is a tactic being used by 10 other candidates funded by a PAC organized by anti-abortion activist Randall Terry, who is also a candidate in Virginia.<\/p>\n
His fundraising website states that federal law forbidding censorship of congressional ads means television stations cannot refuse to run the graphic photos.<\/p>\n
Mililani Trask questioned how the ad was allowed to air.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe thing is, that what is our job? How could this be allowed?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Matayoshi said it would be difficult to distinguish candidates who actually want to serve in office from those just trying to send a message.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of candidates run to push a particular message, maybe not intending to win, but intending to fight for that message,\u201d Matayoshi said.<\/p>\n
Berning received fewer than a thousand votes in the primary, but it was enough to place him on the general election ballot, which means he could insist on running more uncensored ads.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Congressional candidate Nathan Berning is apologizing after using artificial intelligence to create a false endorsement…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":825243,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":["post-825242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=825242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/825243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=825242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=825242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=825242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}