‘Slopaganda’ has taken over the midterms

This year’s midterms have dovetailed with the moment experts have been warning about for years: when generative artificial intelligence makes content that looks real enough to fool people, is accessible to almost everyone and can be deployed at massive scale.

Political action committees and campaigns spent well over $100 million on fake ads to influence federal, state and local elections this year. Fake pollsters used AI to make up shops and reports overnight. And political-attack websites disguised as nonprofit think tanks swayed local elections. I wrote in September about the Local Government Accountability Institute, a fake research organization that used AI to spin up fake studies and papers as well as attack videos and ads targeting two Sarasota County commissioners in Florida.

This kind of “slopaganda” — which researchers define as unwanted AI-generated content spread in order to manipulate beliefs to achieve political ends — is everywhere.

A Russian disinformation campaign doctored celebrity videos to mock Democrats and urge social media users to vote Republican. A Republican running for a county judge seat in Texas shared an AI-generated video depicting Black voters expressing support for his campaign. In Wisconsin a Republican U.S. representative running for re-election prompted Grok for a video of his opponent ordering “peasants” to vote for her. President Donald Trump has depicted himself as Jesus, the pope and the Green Lantern.

Slop was used by campaigns big and small this year, almost exclusively in support of right-wing candidates. Slopaganda is affordable and so easy to produce that anyone with a basic understanding of the internet can deploy it with minimal effort.

So I did.

With an afternoon to spare, a few prompts to ChatGPT and Claude and Grok, and a $14 charge to the company card, I created a website for the Generative Research Institute for Truth (or GRIFT). I wanted to show how easy it would be to launch a fake political organization like LGAI, and convince the algorithms — and, if I wanted to take it further, the voters — that my slopaganda was legit.

The site features a mission statement, an advisory council, research papers full of statistics and even an award section, all created by AI. I announced the organization on Substack and Facebook pages I set up, and had Grok create videos using my likeness to advertise. The GRIFT was on, and my slopaganda campaign was more successful than it had any business being.

Watch “SLOPAGANDA!” the second episode of “The Deep End with Brandy Zadrozny” on YouTube and at MS NOW.

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