A Trump-endorsed GOP candidate deleted a post from his campaign’s social media accounts over the weekend after his opponent, incumbent Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), accused him of using artificial intelligence to cook it up.
Ed Gallrein, a retired Navy Seal set to challenge the Trump critic in next week’s primary, shared a message celebrating “faith, family, patriotism” as well as “small towns and communities” alongside snaps from a campaign stop at Vanceburg Mayfest in Kentucky on Saturday.
But, as Lexington Herald-Leader reporter Austin Horn and Massie’s campaign later highlighted, Gallrein’s post included a strange opening line indicating the message stemmed from an answer delivered by an AI chatbot.
“Here’s a polished social media post in your usual campaign/community-focused tone,” began the caption before lines about the festival and “neighbors coming together.”
While the AI bot-like message appears to have been wiped from the campaign’s social media pages (along with an apparent redo on X), the initial opening line is still seen in a Google search snapshot of a campaign Facebook post.
Massie used the allegedly artificial caption to pounce on Gallrein in a post on Saturday.
“Now I know why woke Eddie won’t debate me! He uses AI to write all his social media posts. Unfortunately for him, he’s not smart enough to remove Grok’s feedback to him. 😂,” he wrote alongside screenshots of the since-deleted post.
JS has reached out to the Gallrein campaign for comment.
AI drama has seeped elsewhere into the GOP primary race to take Kentucky’s 4th congressional district.
Massie, who holds a slight lead over Gallrein in the polls heading into next Tuesday’s election, slammed what he called a “disgusting and defamatory” AI-generated attack ad released by a Trump-aligned group last week.
The ad accuses him of being in a “throuple” with Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — two progressive Democrats part of the so-called Squad —before flashing to phony footage of the congressman holding hands with and going out to dinner with the two.
The ad attempts to use the imagery to call attention to Massie’s votes against Trump’s agenda before a narrator describes such moves as something “worse than adultery.”
“It reeks of desperation, but they’re hoping the older generation won’t realize it’s an AI generated lie,” wrote Massie of the ad.