Pamela Evette deepfake video — Oct 2026

During her campaign for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, South Carolina Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette became the subject of an AI-generated political advertisement that depicted her in a gloomy room undergoing a polygraph test. The video concluded with the lie detector catching fire, a dramatization that caused genuine confusion among some voters regarding the veracity of the footage.

What happened

The advertisement, which was reportedly paid for by a political action committee, featured a synthetic depiction of Evette in a distressing scenario. Although the ad included a disclaimer stating the content was generated with artificial intelligence, the disclosure was insufficient to prevent voter uncertainty. While traveling the state, Evette encountered constituents who asked if she had actually been forced to take a lie-detector test. Evette noted that while she initially dismissed the video as ridiculous, she realized that a segment of the electorate struggled to distinguish between the AI-generated imagery and reality. This confusion led some voters to question the truthfulness of the events depicted. In response to the circulation of these ads, Evette’s own campaign utilized AI to create a video depicting her opponent, Attorney General Alan Wilson, rejecting a call from President Donald Trump, though she maintained that her campaign explicitly disclosed the use of AI in that instance.