{"id":180,"date":"2026-06-17T15:07:58","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T15:07:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanhousingtransition.com\/?p=180"},"modified":"2026-06-17T15:07:58","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T15:07:58","slug":"prattman-murder-by-tractor-and-painted-clowns-how-ai-is-transforming-the-political-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanhousingtransition.com\/?p=180","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Prattman,\u2019 Murder by Tractor, and Painted Clowns: How AI Is Transforming the Political Campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this month, Facebook users in Michigan were treated to an AI-generated video featuring the current governor, Gretchen Whitmer \u2014 accompanied by gubernatorial candidate and current Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, California Governor Gavin Newsom, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz \u2014 absorbed in scheming around a fire after dark.<\/p>\n

Read more House Republicans Sound the Alarm on China Exploiting U.S. Technology<\/a><\/p>\n

The background track is an instrumental version of Cyndi Lauper\u2019s \u201cGirls Just Want to Have Fun,\u201d and the post caption reads, \u201cDemocrats just wanna have fun- at your expense.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCan you believe it\u2019s been eight years already?\u201d AI-generated Whitmer asks at the start of the video.<\/p>\n

\u201cTime flies when you\u2019re getting rich off the taxpayers,\u201d AI-generated Newsom replies, and the four of them laugh. The video, produced by Michigan Republican Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt\u2019s campaign for governor, ends with Nesbitt on a tractor, plowing directly toward Benson before she can get out of its path.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis AI-generated video from Aric Nesbitt is disgusting and uses violent and inflammatory imagery,\u201d the Michigan Democratic Party responded in an official statement on June 10.<\/p>\n

The video is part of a trend of \u201cdeepfakes\u201d capturing the attention of voters in races across the country and causing concern among political professionals warning about a race to the bottom in which campaigns employ increasingly savvy \u2014 and dishonest \u2014 methods to fool voters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to have major trust issues in not just the political system . . . but across everything,\u201d Tyler Doornbos, co-founder of the nonpartisan AI company RunTogether, told National Review<\/span>. \u201cI think it\u2019s only going to get worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in March, a deepfake video of Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico was created and posted by the National Republican Senatorial Committee. It featured an AI-generated Talarico reading his old X posts on controversial issues like religion and gender.<\/p>\n

Maine Republican gubernatorial candidate, Brian Shortsleeve, has also faced backlash for using AI to create a fake audio clip of his Democrat opponent, Maura Healey.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaura Healey just announced she\u2019s officially running for re-election. Here\u2019s what one of her radio ads might sound like \u2014 if she was honest,\u201d he announced in a social media post back in January. The AI-generated radio ad sounded like Healey discussing the spending of \u201cexcessive fees to fund my climate agenda\u201d and how Massachusetts is \u201cthe second most costly state to retire in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month, the Santa Barbara Republican Party ran an AI-generated ad in which Democrat candidate Ricardo Valencia was portrayed as a red-haired, red-nosed clown. Amid backlash from the left decrying the ad as racist, chairwoman of the Santa Barbara Republicans Bobbi McGinnis compared the clown video to Spencer Pratt\u2019s Los Angeles mayoral campaign videos.<\/p>\n

These AI videos of Pratt range from a spinoff of the theme song from the 1990s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air<\/em> to a Batman \u2014 \u201cPrattman\u201d \u2014 versus Joker faceoff between Pratt and current Mayor Karen Bass highlighting the core issues plaguing Los Angeles under Bass. Though these videos were not created by Pratt or his campaign team, Pratt did repost them on social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I could go back in time, maybe I wouldn\u2019t have reposted a couple,\u201d he told CNN in an interview on June 4. \u201cThe AI actually has not really helped my campaign because a lot of the messaging in it isn\u2019t what I focus on \u2014 it\u2019s not laser-focused on the failures of the city leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, he did not criticize his fans who created the videos.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, these AI artists are creators,\u201d he said. \u201cArt is art. I don\u2019t judge the person that made something very compelling that people love to watch or somebody that made a really good song that people love to listen to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Blue-State Attorneys General Tilt the Playing Field to Gain Edge in Climate Change Litigation<\/a><\/p>\n

Unfortunately for his AI-artist fans, Pratt failed to advance to the general election against Bass, losing out to left-wing city council member Nithya Raman.<\/p>\n

Researchers say that such AI-generated content, even when false, can have a psychological effect on people\u2019s decisions.<\/p>\n

A January 2026 study from the National Library of Medicine found that \u201csome people employ a \u2018seeing is believing\u2019 heuristic to make a personal judgement about the authenticity of a video, even when they have been specifically warned that it is fake.\u201d<\/p>\n

Viewers are confident in their ability to spot a fake, citing \u201ctechnical defects\u201d to explain to researchers why they knew a given video was AI, rather than the fact that they were told explicitly it was AI. But the technology is improving all the time.<\/p>\n

Amid this controversy over \u201cdeepfakes,\u201d some entrepreneurs are hoping to harness AI to improve trust and transparency in the political system, rather than erode it.<\/p>\n

Doornbos\u2019s company, RunTogether, is just one of many examples.<\/p>\n

Inspired by his \u201csingularly unpleasant\u201d experience running for city commission in Kentwood, Mich., RunTogether co-founder Daniel VanderMolen partnered with Doornbos, brought in three other experts, and developed a platform to support candidates who don\u2019t feel like they\u2019re getting necessary backing from their party.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur idea is that if you can get more people into the system \u2014 if you can get more people . . . to represent the communities that they serve or that they love \u2014 that you\u2019re going to have a fairer, less polarized, less captive political system,\u201d Doornbos said.<\/p>\n

RunTogether includes branding, website building, outreach, and fundraising and promotional materials. Services like managing ads, printing and distributing campaign material, and receiving contributions are all offered free, and it costs $29 monthly to publish a website.<\/p>\n

The company still uses traditional print flyers and encourages its customers to include real photos instead of AI-generated images. \u201c[I]t\u2019s an old-school way of approaching it with a little bit of a new-school technique for accessing the information,\u201d Doornbos said.<\/p>\n

AdvocacyAI is another site that offers campaigning services. Though its target users are nonprofit organizations at large, it advertises access to \u201c8,000+ verified federal, state, and local legislators\u201d and aids in otherwise time-consuming tasks like professional messaging, engagement tracking, data collection, recruiting, and digital community-building.<\/p>\n

In this age of AI, Doornbos believes campaigning will inevitably look different but not necessarily in ways we would expect.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think people underestimate how attractive it is to see your own community reflected in the political materials that you\u2019re receiving,\u201d he said. \u201cI do think we\u2019re going to see in some of these campaigns that the slickness is going to be dialed back to a degree because the slickness can read as fake.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Trump-Backed Mike Collins Prevails over Kemp-Backed Candidate in Georgia Primary Runoff<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even as campaigns increasingly rely on \u2018deepfakes\u2019 to fool voters, entrepreneurs are harnessing AI to increase political trust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-elections"],"yoast_head":"\n\u2018Prattman,\u2019 Murder by Tractor, and Painted Clowns: How AI Is Transforming the Political Campaign - American Housing Transition<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanhousingtransition.com\/?p=180\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u2018Prattman,\u2019 Murder by Tractor, and Painted Clowns: How AI Is Transforming the Political Campaign - 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