State Rep. Vikki Goodwin, the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, has filed a police report accusing Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick of violating Texas law after his campaign released two ads featuring AI-generated videos of Goodwin.
The videos have since been deleted from Patrick’s X account.
“I did not personally do or say the things depicted in the video; although the ‘person’ in the video appears to be me, it was not actually me,” Goodwin stated in a sworn affidavit, shared with The Texas Tribune, that was submitted with a complaint filed Saturday with the Travis County Sheriff’s Office.
“Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick posted the video with the intent to deceive Texans, injure a candidate, or influence the result of an election,” Goodwin said in the affidavit.
Goodwin cited a 2019 Texas law banning the deepfake videos from being published or distributed within 30 days of an election. The law, one of the earliest in the nation to regulate the use of AI in political campaigns, defines a deepfake video as appearing to depict a real person performing an action that did not occur, with the intent to deceive.
Goodwin says the posts violate the law because in-person early voting begins in Texas on Oct. 19 and mail-in ballots will be sent out soon.
“This outrageous behavior by an elected official is criminal, and Dan Patrick must be held
accountable. No one is above the law in Texas,” Goodwin stated in the affidavit. “With vote by mail ballots about to be sent, it is unconscionable to allow these deepfake videos to be on the internet.”
Allen Blakemore, a campaign spokesman for Patrick, told the New York Times that the material was “an obvious parody produced to entertain.”
“No reasonable person could view it any other way,” Blakemore said. “Furthermore, we have not published or distributed any of these parodies within 30 days of the election.”
The posts were still public when Goodwin filed her police report and affidavit on Sept. 19 but were taken down the following day, according to Sophia Mirto, Goodwin’s communications director.
“Taking down the deepfake ads after Rep. Vikki Goodwin’s criminal complaint seems like an admission of guilt,” Mirto said. “He still broke the law. And he’s still avoiding debates.”
This article first appeared on The Texas Tribune.
