Videos circulating on social media that experts believe were created or altered with artificial intelligence have been tied to Russian activity and are using the real names and photographs of people to push false claims about two Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate as midterm voting nears its end.
Sherrod Brown, who is challenging Republican Sen. Jon Husted in Ohio, is one of the targets. The clip in question presents itself as a news broadcast and features images of Haya Akbik, a former intern who worked for Brown several years earlier, along with pictures of other past staff members. Akbik described the experience as appalling and told The Associated Press that any statements the video attributes to her are “completely made up.”
“It’s my name, it’s my reputation, making this allegation, and it’s just completely false,” she said. “And it harms the senator, someone else, in the process. So, it’s just messed up.”
Similar videos hit a second Senate race and draw expert scrutiny
James Talarico, who is running against Republican Ken Paxton for a Senate seat in Texas, is the second candidate featured in the material. That video is presented as a confessional recorded directly to the camera by someone described as a former student of Talarico.
In response, Talarico spokesperson JT Ennis said in a statement, “The most powerful people in the world know they can’t beat James Talarico with the truth, so they’re slandering him with AI deepfakes, foreign bots, and conspiracy theories to protect their broken, corrupt political system.” Talarico has also faced false social media posts claiming he died.
The approach mirrors earlier efforts by a Russian network identified as Storm-1516, which two years ago produced clips aimed at then-Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Clemson University professor and media forensics expert Darren Linvill said the newer videos carry similar hallmarks and are likely products of the same network. He noted that the accounts which distributed the recent clips had previously shared material from Storm-1516.
Hany Farid, a Dartmouth College professor who researches artificial intelligence deepfakes, said his own analyses indicated the videos aimed at Brown and Talarico were likely either generated or manipulated with the technology. He described the one involving Brown as a “fairly low-tech fake” and said the clip targeting Talarico “is consistent with previous disinformation campaigns released close to Election Day.”
X removed the original posts that carried the videos and suspended the accounts that shared them for violating platform rules. Copies of the material remained available online as of Tuesday, however, and some of those copies had been shared hundreds of times.
Akbik said the clip that used her image highlights the need for Congress to regulate “AI slop on the internet.” “This is so damaging,” she said. Foreign actors have long employed coordinated online content to try to shape how American voters decide which party will control Congress, and the availability of AI tools can make fabricated material appear more convincing.
Published: Oct 29, 2026 08:00 am