MILWAUKEE, WI — Lawyers for Democratic congressional candidate Rebecca Cooke have told U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden to stop posting AI-generated deepfake videos of her. The Republican congressman's response: another AI video.
Cooke is challenging Van Orden, R-Prairie du Chien, in Wisconsin's 3rd Congressional District, among the most closely watched House races in the state heading into the Nov. 3 election.
Van Orden beat Cooke in 2024 by about 3 percentage points.
Wisconsin Public Radio reported that the cease-and-desist letter zeroes in on a video Van Orden shared on X on Aug. 4, which depicts an AI-generated Cooke at a microphone, with a fake Joe Biden visible in the background.
The letter calls the clip fiction. X automatically tags the clips as Grok Imagine creations, identifying them as AI-made. His response to the letter this week was yet another Grok clip, this one starring a red duck.
In a statement reported by WEAU, Cooke accused Van Orden of "producing AI videos putting words in my mouth, pretending that I said things that I didn't and that I support policies I do not."
According to The Center Square, the August video has the fake Cooke saying she wants "to take advantage of as much corruption as possible and give every illegal alien free healthcare."
Her attorneys wrote that "Ms. Cooke never made the statements attributed to her." In Van Orden's reply video, the bird quacks "cease and desist" while strolling along a pond, and the congressman wrote on X that Cooke "had no shame and cannot be trusted."
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