AI Super PAC Attack on NY Lawmaker Backfires Spectacularly

The AI industry's escalating political spending just produced an own-goal. According to The Verge, a Silicon Valley-aligned super PAC backed by figures connected to OpenAI and Anthropic launched an aggressive campaign against New York State Assemblymember Alex Bores — and ended up dramatically raising the profile of a previously obscure state legislator now running for Congress in NY-12.

Bores's offense, in the eyes of the AI lobby: authoring the RAISE Act, a New York bill aimed at imposing safety and transparency requirements on developers of frontier AI models. The legislation is one of several state-level efforts that have emerged in the wake of California's SB 1047 saga, attempting to fill the regulatory vacuum left by the absence of federal AI rules.

The Super PAC Playbook Comes to AI

The political action committee in question is part of a broader push by the AI industry to deploy the same campaign-finance tactics that the crypto industry used to devastating effect against critics like Senator Sherrod Brown. The strategy: identify lawmakers proposing AI guardrails, then flood their races with negative advertising funded by industry-aligned donors.

In Bores's case, the spending appears to have backfired. Rather than quietly sinking his candidacy, the attacks generated national press coverage, fundraising momentum, and a clear narrative — local lawmaker versus billion-dollar AI lobby — that benefits his campaign in a crowded Democratic primary.

Why This Matters for Synthetic Media and AI Policy

The episode is significant for anyone tracking the regulatory landscape around deepfakes, synthetic media, and AI-generated content. Frontier model regulation is the upstream battle that determines what tools are available, what disclosure obligations apply, and what liability attaches when generative systems are misused.

Key implications:

• State-level regulation is now the front line. With federal AI legislation stalled, states like New York, California, and Colorado are where the binding rules are being written — and where industry lobbying is now concentrating.
• AI labs are now overt political actors. OpenAI and Anthropic have publicly positioned themselves as safety-conscious, but the involvement of industry-aligned super PACs in attacking safety-bill sponsors complicates that narrative.
• The crypto playbook is being imported. Fairshake and similar crypto PACs proved that concentrated industry spending can flip primaries. AI-aligned PACs are explicitly studying that model.

What the RAISE Act Actually Does

The RAISE Act focuses on developers of large-scale frontier models, requiring safety evaluations, incident disclosure, and accountability measures for catastrophic risks. Critics in industry argue it duplicates voluntary commitments and could chill open-source development; supporters argue voluntary measures have repeatedly proven insufficient.

For the synthetic media ecosystem specifically — including voice cloning, face swapping, and video generation — these foundation-model rules matter because the same base models often underpin both legitimate creative tools and the systems used for non-consensual deepfakes, fraud, and election manipulation. Whatever transparency and evaluation standards get codified at the model layer will shape what downstream platforms can credibly deploy.

A Preview of 2026

Bores's race is an early test case for how AI industry political spending will play in competitive primaries. If well-funded attacks on safety advocates produce backlash rather than compliance, it changes the calculus for other state legislators considering similar bills. If they succeed elsewhere, expect a chilling effect on AI legislation comparable to what crypto-skeptical Democrats experienced in 2024.

For developers, platforms, and detection vendors building in the synthetic media space, the takeaway is that the rules of the road are being written right now — in state capitols, congressional primaries, and increasingly through campaign-finance proxies. The companies training the models that produce tomorrow's deepfakes are no longer just lobbying. They're picking electoral fights, and sometimes losing them in instructive ways.

Stay informed on AI video and digital authenticity. Follow Skrew AI News.