Description: Republican Virginia lieutenant governor candidate John Reid reportedly held a 40-minute mock debate against a purportedly AI-generated version of Democratic opponent Sen. Ghazala Hashmi. The bot reportedly mimicked her voice and synthesized responses trained on her public statements. Hashmi's campaign denounced the non-consensual likeness as a "shoddy gimmick."
Editor Notes: The event was reportedly livestreamed at this URL: https://youtu.be/BWe1PbGIZw4?si=QdnFo8Ri8CrV40ix.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Unknown deepfake technology developer and Unknown voice cloning technology developer developed an AI system deployed by John Reid, which harmed Ghazala Hashmi , Democracy , Epistemic integrity and Electoral integrity.
Alleged implicated AI systems: Unknown deepfake technology , Unknown voice cloning technology and YouTube
Incident Stats
Incident ID
1249
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2025-10-21
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
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After his Democratic opponent declined all of his debate requests in the Virginia lieutenant governor race, Republican John Reid decided he'd hold a 40-minute one anyway --- against a version of her generated by artificial intelligence.
The…
Variants
A "variant" is an AI incident similar to a known case—it has the same causes, harms, and AI system. Instead of listing it separately, we group it under the first reported incident. Unlike other incidents, variants do not need to have been reported outside the AIID. Learn more from the research paper.
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