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Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Synthetic political media is a documented tool in influence campaigns. Whether it changes how people vote is not established. The practical risk for most voters is acting on a convincing clip or message without checking it. That includes sharing it, believing it, or relying on it for when and where to vote. You can’t reliably spot a fake by eye or ear, so verify the claim and its source instead.
What officials say is happening
In an October 18, 2024 public service announcement about the 2024 election cycle, the FBI and CISA said generative AI lowers the barrier for foreign actors to build more sophisticated influence campaigns. They described synthetic pictures, audio and video deepfakes, and inauthentic news being produced and distributed at greater speed and scale. They said the aims can include undermining confidence in elections and getting people to discuss, share and amplify false or misleading narratives. They also described synthetic media being combined with fake personas, spoofed websites, emails, text messages and messaging apps.
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That is an official warning about methods and intent. It is not a count of how many deepfakes circulate, and it does not show that any specific clip changed votes. It was written for the 2024 cycle, so treat its examples as illustrations of tactics.
Do deepfakes change votes?
The honest answer is that nobody has shown it. A UK Government Office for Science summary, published May 27, 2025, reports the views of experts at a March 2024 roundtable. It says it is unclear whether deepfakes or mis- and disinformation significantly affect voting choice, partly because causation is hard to establish. The note is explicitly not UK government policy, and it is not an estimate of U.S. election impact.
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The same summary points to a different kind of harm. Public awareness of deepfakes can cause confusion, uncertainty and lower trust in institutions, especially media and government. This has two consequences for voters:
- Be wary of claims that a deepfake “swung” an election. Strong, case-specific evidence would be needed, and a general warning is not that.
- Don’t treat doubt as proof. A damaging recording is not automatically fake just because fakes exist. Look for corroboration either way.
How to check a political video or audio clip
No single test settles whether a clip is synthetic. Visual and audio oddities, such as odd hands, blinking or lip-sync, are not a dependable test. Clean-looking fakes exist, and ordinary compression or editing can make real footage look strange. The UK review recommends media-literacy habits built around four questions: the source, the content, its plausibility and its purpose. It also cautions that telling truth from disinformation is hard in a fast-moving media environment. The steps below follow that approach.
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- Pause before sharing. Content built to provoke a strong reaction is where speed matters most to the people spreading it.
- Check who produced it. FBI and CISA advise evaluating who created the information. Find the original post or publisher rather than a repost, screenshot or clipped version. Ask whether the account has a track record or looks newly made.
- Look for an AI label. FBI and CISA also advise looking for labels identifying AI-generated material. A label is useful evidence. A missing label proves nothing about authenticity.
- Ask whether it is plausible and what it wants from you. Does it fit what the person has said or done elsewhere? Is it pushing you to share, donate, panic or skip voting?
- Confirm the underlying claim through trusted official sources. For a statement attributed to a candidate, look for the campaign’s own channels or coverage from several independent outlets. For anything about voting, go to your election office (see below).
- Hold your conclusion loosely. If you can’t verify it either way, the right answer is “unconfirmed”, and the right action is not to amplify it.
Real footage can still mislead
“Not AI” does not mean “true.” Genuine video can be old, cropped, selectively edited, captioned wrongly or stripped of context. Checking the event, date and location matters as much as asking whether the media was generated. Detector tools, reverse image searches and metadata checks can be useful leads, but none of them conclusively proves a clip real or fake on its own.
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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesVoting logistics: go to the official source
For dates, hours, locations, registration and procedures, use your state or local election office, not a viral post, a forwarded text or an AI chatbot answer. The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) warns that AI-generated information can look plausible yet be inaccurate, particularly about voting dates, hours and locations. A fake clip is not the only way to get this wrong. A confident, fluent summary can be wrong too.
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Election officials are also rehearsing for this. The Brennan Center for Justice described a December 2023 tabletop exercise in Arizona that drew participants from 14 of the state’s 15 counties. That figure reflects participation in a simulation. It says nothing about how often real incidents occur.
When to report something
FBI and CISA say people can report suspicious or criminal election-related activity to their local FBI field office. That includes knowingly false information about the time, place or manner of an election that is meant to deprive people of their right to vote. Many misleading political claims are not crimes, so a misleading ad or a partisan falsehood is not automatically a reportable offense. False voting instructions aimed at keeping people from voting are the clearest case.
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Federal: the FEC
In September 2024 the Federal Election Commission declined to begin a new rulemaking on AI in campaign ads. It instead adopted an interpretive rule: the existing federal ban on fraudulent misrepresentation of campaign authority applies no matter what technology is used. In the FEC’s words, “The statute, and the Commission’s implementing regulation, is technology neutral.” The agency said it would apply the law case by case. Before acting, it had received more than 2,000 public comments on a petition about deceptive AI campaign content. That number counts comments, not public opinion or affected ads.
The statute covers impersonating another candidate or party in a damaging way, or falsely claiming to act for a candidate or party in order to solicit contributions. It is not a general federal ban on political deepfakes. It does not require labels on all AI political content, and it does not reach every deceptive claim.
States: a moving patchwork
Axios, citing the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), reported on August 7, 2026 that 29 states had AI election-deepfake laws in effect. It also reported that laws in California and Hawaii had been permanently enjoined by courts. That is a dated snapshot from a news report, so check the NCSL tracker and your state’s current statute and court rulings before relying on it. The laws vary in these ways:
| Question to ask about a state law | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Does it require a disclosure, or ban the content? | A disclaimer requirement and a prohibition are very different protections. |
| Does it apply only in a window before an election? | Some restrictions are time-limited, so the same clip may be treated differently depending on when it appears. |
| Which content and speakers are covered? | Scope determines whether a given ad, post or robocall is reached. |
| What exceptions apply? | Exemptions can change the outcome for a particular piece of media. |
| Has a court enjoined or narrowed it? | As the California and Hawaii cases show, a law on the books may not be enforceable. |
Don’t assume that your state has the same rule as a neighboring one, or that any rule is in force. Any claim about one state needs that state’s current law behind it.
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