There’s a reason people are uneasy about artificial intelligence generating images, speeches, and videos that never happened. It’s not just about realism. It’s about consent—and in politics, consent is the very foundation of democracy.
But lately, that foundation is being chipped away. Not by bad actors on the fringe, but by the very people elected to uphold it.
Across the globe and increasingly in the U.S., politicians are leaning into AI-generated content. Entire campaign ads are created using tools that simulate reality, often without any disclosure. And while some may argue this is just modern messaging—another evolution in political theater—there’s something more insidious beneath the surface.
When elected officials use AI to create content that appears real but isn’t, they don’t just blur the truth. They manipulate consent. They create an emotional response in voters using events or visuals that never happened, invoking trust, fear, or anger under false pretenses. And that’s not strategy: it’s psychological coercion.
As Brian Sathianathan, Co-Founder and CTO of Iterate.Ai, explains: “When people, especially elected officials or governing bodies in an official capacity, post AI generated images to push their own narrative, it erodes trust and fuels division.
Democracy, at its core, requires informed decision-making. Voters are supposed to weigh real issues, evaluate real actions, and cast their votes accordingly. But what happens when the information they’re using isn’t just biased—but entirely fabricated?
The danger here is not theoretical. It’s emotional. It’s cognitive. And it’s cumulative.
Once a citizen is exposed to an AI-generated image or video—even if later debunked—it leaves a psychological imprint. Studies in cognitive science show that first impressions, even when false, are sticky. And political campaigns know this. That’s why negative ads work. That’s why deepfakes are dangerous. And that’s why this moment requires more than just media literacy. It requires regulation.
To date, a few states have started moving in the right direction, pushing for laws that would require disclaimers on AI-generated political content or empower platforms to take down manipulated media. But that patchwork approach doesn’t match the scale or speed of the technology.
Sathianathan is blunt about the gap: “But we still don’t have any solid federal rules, and that’s leaving a big gap.”
Without a national framework, AI becomes a weapon with no uniform rules of engagement. And while the private sector can take some responsibility, platforms can’t bear the entire burden. What’s missing is political will; perhaps because the same people who benefit from AI manipulation are the ones writing, or stalling, the rules.
There’s also a larger philosophical dilemma at play. If politicians use AI to depict falsehoods—intentionally or not—they’re rewriting reality. Not in the Orwellian sense of erasing facts from history books, but in the far more immediate and insidious act of replacing fact with fiction before history is even written.
And that’s where the consent crisis comes in.
If voters are basing their decisions on synthetic content that looks and sounds real, then the choices they make—at the ballot box or in the public square—are compromised. Not because they weren’t paying attention, but because they were manipulated by something designed to look like truth.
That’s not campaigning. That’s corruption of context.
Sathianathan makes the path forward clear: “We need clear limits on how AI can be used in political speech—especially by elected officials. If someone is speaking in an official capacity, the public deserves to know whether what they’re seeing or hearing is real. Otherwise, AI just becomes another tool for misinformation and manipulation.”
Transparency isn’t a buzzword. In this context, it’s a safeguard. Disclosure laws, content verification tools, and AI watermarks can help—but only if paired with real accountability. Elected officials must be held to a higher standard. Not just because they represent us but because they set the tone for how truth is treated in public life.
If we want to protect democracy from digital distortion, we have to start at the top.
Because once truth is up for grabs, so is everything else.