You know what’s beautiful about watching a political campaign implode? It’s like seeing someone try to put out a grease fire with water – you know exactly what’s going to happen, they apparently don’t, and the whole thing becomes exponentially worse with each desperate attempt to fix it.
Andrew Cuomo just gave us a masterclass in this particular art form.
Here’s a guy who spent four decades in New York politics, resigned in disgrace after the DOJ said he sexually harassed a dozen women, and then decided – you know what? – I deserve another shot at this. Not as a humbled man seeking redemption, mind you, but as someone who apparently thinks the problem with his last run was that he was too authentic, too present, too willing to actually show his real face.
So naturally, he turned to AI.
The results were about as appetizing as finding a cigarette butt in your bourbon. Which, to be clear, has happened to me more than once, and I still preferred it to watching Cuomo’s AI-generated campaign videos.
Let’s start with the crown jewel of this shit show: an AI-generated ad showing Cuomo doing “real New York jobs” like operating subway cars and washing skyscraper windows. You know, the kind of work that a guy from a political dynasty who spent his entire career in air-conditioned offices would definitely know how to do. The video had all the authenticity of a three-dollar bill, which is fitting because that’s about what it would’ve cost to make something that looked equally fake but at least involved a human being somewhere in the production process.
The thing is, when you’re trying to convince people you’re a man of the people, maybe don’t create a campaign ad that screams “I couldn’t even be bothered to pretend to do these jobs in real life.” It’s like wearing a Halloween costume of yourself as a working-class hero. Except you’re not even in the costume – you had a computer generate an image of you in the costume.
Meanwhile, his opponent Zohran Mamdani – a young socialist who probably makes most Democratic Party consultants break out in hives – was actually walking around talking to voters like they were human beings. Revolutionary stuff, I know. The kind of bleeding-edge campaign strategy that involves looking people in the eye and not having an algorithm do your personality for you.
Mamdani absolutely dunked on the AI ad, pointing out that Cuomo made his TV spots the same way he wrote his housing policy: with ChatGPT. “Then again,” Mamdani added, “maybe a fake Cuomo is better than the real one?”
That’s the kind of burn that makes you want to pour one out for the deceased. Except Cuomo wasn’t dead – he was very much alive and apparently determined to make things worse.
Because this is where it gets really good. Cuomo’s campaign released another AI ad called “Criminals for Zohran Mamdani” that was so staggeringly racist they had to yank it down faster than you can say “damage control.” It featured a deepfake of Mamdani eating rice with his hands – something actual racists already attack him for – and a Black man in a keffiyeh robbing a store. When people rightfully lost their minds, the campaign blamed it on a “junior staffer.”
Sure. A junior staffer. Because nothing says “I had no idea what my campaign was doing” like the guy who’s supposed to be running for mayor. It’s the political equivalent of “the dog ate my homework,” except the dog is an AI generator and the homework is basic human decency.
But wait, there’s more. Cuomo also released an AI ad parodying “I’m Just a Bill” from Schoolhouse Rock, featuring an AI Mamdani lighting money on fire while being questioned by an anthropomorphic bill who – and I’m not making this up – randomly becomes pregnant. Then ChatGPT shows up as a walking smartphone to explain why Mamdani sucks. If you’re reading this and thinking “that sounds like something a person would come up with while having a fever dream,” congratulations, you’re more coherent than Cuomo’s entire campaign staff.
There was also a Halloween ad where AI-Mamdani pulls off his face to reveal he’s actually Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa in disguise. You know, standard Scooby-Doo villain stuff. Because nothing says “serious political discourse” like unmasking your opponent as if you’re solving mysteries with a talking dog.
Here’s the beautiful irony: while Cuomo was creating these bizarre AI fever dreams, the actual Mamdani was walking around Brooklyn in a suit, trick-or-treating with voters, handing out candy, taking photos, having genuine human interactions. The kind of thing that used to be called “campaigning” before we decided that was too much work.
The really damning part? Cuomo had billionaire backers. Plural. He could’ve afforded to make real ads. Hell, he could’ve hired every unemployed film crew in New York City – and there are plenty of them – to make something that didn’t look like it was spit out by a machine that learned about human behavior from spam emails.
But no. He went with AI. And in doing so, he put himself in the same category as Donald Trump and his Department of Homeland Security posting AI anime images of crying deportees, or deepfakes of Trump dumping diarrhea on protesters from a fighter jet. That’s the company Cuomo chose to keep: the far-right meme lords using AI to create racist propaganda and bizarre power fantasies.
This is where we are with AI right now. It’s not curing cancer or solving climate change like the CEOs promised. It’s the technology of choice for aging politicians who can’t connect with voters, and right-wing trolls manufacturing evidence of crimes that never happened. It’s become the visual equivalent of that weird uncle’s Facebook posts – the stuff that makes young people cringe and everyone else wonder what the hell happened to basic standards of quality.
Cuomo thought AI would make him look forward-thinking. Instead, it made him look exactly like what he is: a 67-year-old relic of a political dynasty trying to buy his way back into relevance without doing any of the actual work of being a real person that voters might like.
And you know what the worst part is? He probably still doesn’t get it. He probably thinks he lost because he didn’t use enough AI, or because the algorithms weren’t sophisticated enough, or because that damn junior staffer screwed up the racist ad.
The truth is simpler: he lost because when voters had a choice between a real human being and a series of increasingly deranged computer-generated images, they chose the human. Mamdani won by a landslide. Not because he was perfect, but because he was present. Because he showed up. Because when people saw him, they saw an actual person instead of a political dynasty’s desperate attempt to manufacture authenticity with the same technology their boomer relatives use to make fake pictures of Trump as a superhero.
There’s a lesson in here somewhere about the difference between authentic connection and manufactured bullshit. About how no amount of technological wizardry can replace actually giving a damn about the people you want to vote for you. About how using AI to pretend you’re doing working-class jobs is somehow more insulting than just admitting you’ve never done them.
But Cuomo probably won’t learn it. Politicians like him never do. They just find new and increasingly expensive ways to avoid the fundamental work of being human.
Me? I’m going to sit here and appreciate the schadenfreude. It’s one of the few pleasures in life that’s still genuinely authentic, no algorithms required.
—Henry
Source: Andrew Cuomo’s Extensive Use of AI Made His Campaign a Toxic Joke