Republican Attorney General for Texas Ken Paxton released an AI-generated attack ad targeting Democratic State Representative James Talarico’s religious statements as their Texas Senate contest entered its closing stretch. Polling narrowly favors Talarico, but prediction markets remain split over whether a Democrat can overcome Texas’ Republican lean. Texas voters must assess genuine remarks repackaged into a synthetic performance containing words and actions that did not occur together.
Newsweek emailed the Talarico and Paxton campaigns for comment on Wednesday morning and is awaiting responses. Texas has not sent a Democrat to the Senate since Lloyd Bentsen won reelection in 1988. That history makes Talarico’s polling notable, but a narrow survey lead is not the same as a secure advantage in a state where Republican candidates have repeatedly survived competitive races.
Posted by Paxton’s official X account on September 8, the 30-second ad depicts an AI-generated look-alike of Talarico writing in a book called "The King James Talarico Bible." The synthetic character recites a passage assembled from remarks Talarico previously made about Christianity, gender and Jesus. "James Talarico is weaponizing faith to sell a radical agenda, and he even brags about hating Christianity," Paxton’s account captioned the video. Several of the statements referenced in the ad came from different speeches or interviews.
Generative AI turns them into a continuous scene, creating the appearance of a single performance that never happened. Political commentator Mehdi Hasan responded by reposting the video with his call for such advertising to be outlawed. Meanwhile, X user Frank Luntz wrote: "Is this the first nationwide TV ad with an AI depiction of a political opponent?
I can only imagine what 2028 ads will be like." These reactions capture the wider argument surrounding synthetic campaign media: political satire is protected speech, but realistic impersonation can make it harder for viewers to separate quotation from invention. Texas Public Opinion Research surveyed 1,000 likely voters from August 21 to 24 and placed Talarico ahead 48 percent to 42 percent, with a margin of error of 3.3 percentage points. Emerson College Polling’s August 9-10 survey of 1,000 likely voters found Paxton leading 47 percent to 46 percent, within the three-point margin of error.
The University of Texas/Texas Politics Project found Talarico ahead 42 percent to 39 percent among 1,218 likely voters interviewed from August 5 to 13. Its margin of error was 2.8 percentage points. Prediction markets let traders buy contracts tied to an election result.
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