arXiv:2611.11658v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: The use of generative AI in political campaigns has drawn public concern and policy attention. Public concerns range from distrust of candidates to skepticism about the authenticity and accuracy of political advertising, including AI-generated images and video. Nearly half of U.S. states have enacted laws that prohibit, or require disclosure of, "materially deceptive" AI-generated content (AIGC) in elections to guard against these concerns. This study measures how candidates and their campaigns produce and circulate AIGC during an election cycle. We develop two measures that estimate not only wether campaigns use AIGC, but how much they produce (magnitude) and in what forms (modality). We apply these measures to a novel dataset of text and images from the campaign websites, X accounts, and emails of 12,977 candidates for U.S. political office from 2023 to 2025. We report three findings. First, detectable AIGC from campaigns increased significantly across modalities over the observation window, and campaigns that use AIGC frequently do not disclose it. Second, incumbents' campaigns produced significantly less AIGC than challengers' campaigns. Third, candidates in states with AIGC disclosure or prohibition laws do not produce measurably less AIGC than candidates in other states. Our method and findings have implications for transparency and trust in elections, and on state laws that regulate AI use in campaigns. Because current state laws largely target mainly "materially deceptive" content, we identify additional policy mechanisms that could increase electoral transparency and improve trust as AIGC becomes more prevalent.
Abstract: The use of generative AI in political campaigns has drawn public concern and policy attention. Public concerns range from distrust of candidates to skepticism about the authenticity and accuracy of political advertising, including AI-generated images and video. Nearly half of U.S. states have enacted laws that prohibit, or require disclosure of, "materially deceptive" AI-generated content (AIGC) in elections to guard against these concerns. This study measures how candidates and their campaigns produce and circulate AIGC during an election cycle. We develop two measures that estimate not only wether campaigns use AIGC, but how much they produce (magnitude) and in what forms (modality). We apply these measures to a novel dataset of text and images from the campaign websites, X accounts, and emails of 12,977 candidates for U.S. political office from 2023 to 2025. We report three findings. First, detectable AIGC from campaigns increased significantly across modalities over the observation window, and campaigns that use AIGC frequently do not disclose it. Second, incumbents' campaigns produced significantly less AIGC than challengers' campaigns. Third, candidates in states with AIGC disclosure or prohibition laws do not produce measurably less AIGC than candidates in other states. Our method and findings have implications for transparency and trust in elections, and on state laws that regulate AI use in campaigns. Because current state laws largely target mainly "materially deceptive" content, we identify additional policy mechanisms that could increase electoral transparency and improve trust as AIGC becomes more prevalent.
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