Wisconsin.

to spend $423 million on campaign ads in Wisconsin this year, with $60 million in ads for the presidential race alone reserved for airtime between now and Election Day, we may be used to attack ads stretching the truth or twisting facts, but a new concern comes with the growing use of artificial intelligence, or AI to create an entirely new false reality.

Here and now, senior political reporter Zach Schultz has the story.

connoisseur of watch just about any local newscast in Wisconsin.

And when the station cuts to break, many of the commercials will be campaign ads.

Thanks a lot, Khaba.

>> Politico will occupy a large percentage of our available inventory between now and the election, and have, for many months.

manager of Wbay-tv in Green Bay in a purple state, campaign ads are the best way to reach the last few voters who haven't already made up their minds.

>> Well, let's be honest, the majority of the public is already decided the way that they're going to vote, and these ads are just over that little really undecideds in the middle.

>> Most of the controversies over campaign ads come when one side demands their opponent retract an ad due to inaccuracies or technicalities.

Lavin says TV stations have lawyers to deal with those issues.

because number one, I would rather the other side.

If there's falsehoods in an ad, the other side has every bit of right to actually answer those by buying more ads, right?

>> A new concern over ads has to do with the growing use of artificial intelligence, or AI, to generate images that look real.

Earlier this year, the legislature passed a bill that requires any campaign ad using AI to include that information.

>> Any time they're using any type of AI, they're supposed to disclose it.

$1,000 penalty, but that penalty would be paid by the group running the ad.

An amendment to the bill made sure broadcasters are not liable if AI is used and not disclosed.

>> There is a bit of responsibility on the side of the broadcasters, but it's also extremely hard to police.

>> Mike Wagner is a professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin who has studied the use of AI in political speech.

>> How can they know for sure the video was AI generated?

How can they know for sure the script was AI generated?

>> Lavin says so far, there's no evidence of any AI in campaign ads.

place, I have not seen or heard an ad that has used that disclaimer yet.

So either it's if it's being used, nobody's disclosing it or they've determined that that the penalties are so high that they're just not going to use AI to determine it.

>> I think the real danger with AI in this election is not in campaign advertisements.

It's in social media posts that go viral.

of this using AI as a boogeyman.

>> So something happens in the other side says, oh, that must be.

I can't possibly be real.

>> In August, Kamala Harris held a rally at an airport hangar in Detroit, Michigan.

Donald Trump falsely claimed photos of the event used AI to make the crowd look bigger.

>> I spoke at that rally.

I spoke to all 15,000 of those people.

They are real.

>> Garlin Gilchrist is Michigan's lieutenant governor.

about that crowd that he had to find a way to try to delegitimize it.

And so by and saying it was artificial intelligence to think that's all he knows how to do is play on people's fears.

>> Wagner says beyond making AI a boogeyman, there's another way I can be abused.

>> The other is that a candidate picks up on a post that uses AI and treats it as true, which has also happened where a former President Trump shared information that Taylor Swift had endorsed him, which she had not.

have affected the race for president.

Taylor Swift later endorsed Kamala Harris.

When we fight, we win.

Who has proven her large crowds are real?

>> What a crowd.

You know, Donald Trump says Democrats can only have large crowds because of AI.

>> I wasn't even involved in the biggest lie of the campaign so far.

>> They're eating the dogs.

>> When Donald Trump falsely claimed Haitian immigrants were stealing pets and eating them in Springfield, Ohio, the source of the misinformation was a Facebook post.

No AI involved at all.

>> So when these kinds of things happen to especially when the candidates themselves pick it up and share it, those things are going to take on a life of their own in really remarkable and fast ways that are hard to regulate.

misinformation are the same as the audience for campaign ads, low information voters who are paying attention at the last minute are often susceptible to the messages because they're new to them.

attention to the race, and these to misinformation.

is the same as it's always been.

>> There is so much disinformation out there, could be in these campaigns, could be spreading, spreading disinformation.

I think it's up to the individual voter to determine what's actually the truth.

Zach Schultz for "Here& Now" >> Despite a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling in July that says absentee drop boxes are fully legal, they still remain a point of contention.

Since then, some local clerks around the state have decided they will not allow their residents to use an absentee ballot drop box for the November election, saying they are not secure but one city mayor took matters into his own hands.

This week, donning a hardhat and workers gloves, Wausau Mayor Doug Denney wheeled the city's only drop box away from its position outside city Hall, but not before posing for pictures to, quote, memorialize the event.

Denney now faces a legal investigation as he is not an election official, and this was not a decision approved by was not a decision approved by