The Republican Nominee for New York Governor Made a Creepy, AI-Generated Video of Mamdani and Hochul
404 Media Samantha Cole
New York’s GOP governor nominee posted an AI fake of Hochul and Mamdani hanging out and plotting. Democrats want the state to probe it under a law on deceptive campaign media.
Based on reporting by 404 Media, Samantha Cole — read the original for the full story.
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Bruce Blakeman, the Republican nominee for New York governor, has stepped into the kind of AI mess that now seems to arrive with its own press cycle. He posted a generated video of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Governor Kathy Hochul gardening together, riding bikes, and acting like they were scheming to make the state unaffordable.
The post paired that clip with an attack on the two Democrats’ handling of the cost of living. Blakeman blamed them for utility rate hikes, higher taxes, government spending, and businesses leaving the state, then used the moment to pitch his own tax cut plan, including zero state income tax on the first $50,000 of income, or $100,000 for joint filers.
That did not go over quietly. ABC News10 reported that the New York State Democratic Party filed a complaint asking the Board of Elections to investigate whether Blakeman violated state election law by using AI in political material that is materially deceptive. The law says that if someone distributes political communication that includes materially deceptive media and knows it’s deceptive, it has to be labeled directly on the image, video, or audio.
There is a carveout for satire and parody, and Blakeman appears to be leaning on that. He told News10 that people like humor in politics and that satire has been around since the start of the country. Hochul’s campaign, meanwhile, answered with its own punch, accusing him of lying to New Yorkers and pointing to his record on property taxes, crime, and an armed MAGA militia.
The video lands in a state that has already been arguing about this stuff. In January, Hochul said she wanted to ban AI-generated depictions of candidates in political ads within 90 days of an election. And in 2025, Andrew Cuomo’s official campaign account posted an AI video filled with racist and Islamophobic stereotypes, including one aimed at Mamdani, and that video was labeled as AI.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
Political AI is already doing what political consultants always wanted: making the stupid stuff cheaper and faster. The satire excuse is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, and not in a convincing way. If campaigns want to play with synthetic media, they should at least have the decency to label the nonsense before everyone else has to clean up the mess.
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