Mississippi Republicans’ newfound objection to AI-generated ads is the latest sign that MAGA world is fretting over the state’s U.S. Senate race.

The Democratic candidate, Scott Colom, said late last week that his campaign would delete an ad created with the help of artificial intelligence tools that depicted his Republican opponent, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, hurrying away from reporters, as she has done before. The ad has been online for weeks, but Mississippi’s Republican attorney general demanded that Colom’s campaign take it down.

According to Mississippi Today:

Republican Attorney General Lynn Fitch said Friday that Scott Colom, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, likely violated state law with a digital ad that featured an artificial intelligence-generated depiction of Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith running away from reporters.

Colom told Mississippi Today he would delete the post because he didn’t want Fitch to launch litigation with taxpayer money. That came after Fitch sent Colom a complaint letter demanding that he remove that ad from his social media accounts. If he did not, the complaint said, the attorney general’s office could file an injunction against him.

“As violations of this election integrity law can carry criminal penalties, Attorney General Fitch has also asked Scott Colom and his campaign to preserve all records related to this matter so as not to obstruct justice,” the statement reads.

The article quotes Colom as saying Hyde-Smith is “clearly desperate” and that her allies are attempting to “weaponize the justice system to distract from the real issues, which is that she has sold out our farmers, sold out our small businesses, and sold out our families.”

You can judge for yourself whether you believe the Mississippi GOP truly cares about the scourge of AI-generated political ads, but the party’s fierce support for President Donald Trump — whose social media feeds have become cesspools of political AI slop — raises doubt in my mind.

What seems more likely to me is that Mississippi Republicans are trying to undercut Colom’s campaign, which has already garnered laughter for another ad targeting Hyde-Smith — in a midterm race the GOP didn’t think would be competitive.

Republicans have reportedly voiced concerns that Hyde-Smith’s Senate seat appears to be in play for Democrats in next week’s election, amid backlash toward Trump and the GOP. The fact that the president scheduled a rally in Mississippi one week out from Election Day reflects such concerns, despite forecasters giving Hyde-Smith the edge in their estimates of how the race will shake out. The GOP candidate has said Trump would come campaign for her “if I get in trouble,” and it looks like that’s what’s happening.

Short of a victory, one could argue that Colom improving on Democratic Senate nominee Mike Espy’s 2020 election numbers would be a remarkable feat for liberal activists in Mississippi, which boasts the largest percentage of Black eligible voters out of any state in the country but has — with help from decades of racist voter suppression — remained almost exclusively under control of white conservatives.

Colom is looking to change that. His ads prove that his campaign has the GOP’s attention — and help support Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock’s argument that Democrats need to invest more heavily in Southern states.

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