AI Attack Ads Are Coming for Treasure Coast Races. Are We Ready?

# Opinion | TC Sentinel Editorial Board

Picture a sitting U.S. congressman, reduced to toddler size, sitting in a playpen on the House floor in a diaper, fingers in his ears, face scrunched in a manufactured tantrum. The narrator sneers: "Baby Jared's having another tantrum." The whole thing took two days and almost certainly cost a fraction of what a traditional political ad would.

This is where American campaigning is heading. Treasure Coast voters should be paying close attention, because the technology now being piloted in Florida — and aimed at candidates in districts that border ours — is already knocking on our door.

The Republican Party of Florida recently released two AI-generated attack ads targeting Democratic congressional candidates. One depicts U.S. Rep. Jared Moskowitz, the Broward-area Democrat, as an infantilized toddler in Congress. The other mocks Jennifer Jenkins, a Space Coast Democrat running against U.S. Rep. Mike Haridopolos — an Indian Harbour Beach Republican representing Florida's eighth Congressional District, whose eastern boundary runs directly along the Indian River Lagoon, through communities our readers call home. This is not a story about somewhere else. It is a story about us.

The ads include on-screen disclosures identifying them as AI-generated content — a requirement under a Florida law passed in 2024. That compliance matters. It is a meaningful distinction separating these spots from genuine deepfakes, which present fabricated imagery as real. Nobody watching an elephant chase a cartoon-rendered Jenkins from a circus tent will mistake it for documentary footage.

But compliance with the letter of the law does not resolve the deeper question the law cannot answer: What happens when the technology gets cheaper, faster, and harder to read as artificial? Ed Longe, director of the Center for Technology and Innovation at the James Madison Institute, put it plainly — "Anyone can go onto Grok and generate an image" — and he is right. The barrier to producing photorealistic political imagery is now effectively zero.

The strongest argument for these ads is also the most honest one: they are funny. The Republican Party of Florida is not pretending otherwise. Its own statement compared the strategy to the satirical AI campaign Spencer Pratt ran in the Los Angeles mayoral race, where humor-driven AI spots attracted millions of organic views and helped vault a former reality television personality into serious contention. Satire has a long, legitimate place in political speech. A cartoon elephant chasing a candidate through a circus tent is closer to an editorial cartoon than a forged document.

That distinction, however, depends entirely on the good faith of the producer and the media literacy of the viewer. Both are variables that erode under pressure. As Longe noted, backlash against "AI slop" is already building, and voters are growing skeptical of manipulated imagery across the board — including content that is clearly labeled.

Here on the Treasure Coast, where the eighth Congressional District race will be fought across Indian River County precincts, school board chambers, and lagoon-side town halls, the risk is not that residents will believe a cartoon. The risk is subtler: that the normalization of AI-generated political imagery gradually degrades the baseline trust voters need to evaluate any image, any claim, any candidate.

Indian River County School District and St. Lucie County Schools have both begun integrating AI literacy into classroom curricula, and that work has never mattered more. Teaching students — and, frankly, adults — to interrogate what they see online is now a civic imperative, not an elective.

The Florida Legislature's 2024 disclosure requirement was a start. It is not enough. The standard should be strengthened to require disclosures that are prominent, persistent, and platform-enforced — not a small-print graphic that disappears in three seconds. Florida's legislative session will return in 2026; state Sen. Erin Grall, who represents Indian River and St. Lucie counties in Senate District 30, and state Rep. Toby Overdorf, whose district covers parts of Martin County, are the right officials to hear from on this. Contact their offices and ask, on the record, where they stand on tightening AI disclosure standards before the midterm campaigns kick into full gear.

Satire is protected. Democracy requires it. But democracy also requires that voters know what is real. Right now, the law asks campaigns to label their illusions. It should ask much more than that.

This article was generated with AI assistance using publicly available information. It was reviewed and approved by a human editor before publication. TC Sentinel uses AI writing tools in accordance with FTC guidelines.