Attorneys for Sen. Marsha Blackburn have threatened legal action over a political action committee complaint that uses AI to accuse the senator and front-runner in the Tennessee gubernatorial race of accepting bribes from Big Pharma.
The ad is a parody of drug advertising that “sells” Blackburn as a resource that can be purchased to push policy through the Senate. In the background, apparently AI-generated people play pickleball, hold envelopes of cash in front of the US Capitol, drink champagne in a convertible, sing karaoke and shoot each other with water guns in suits.
Several visually absurd movements and gestures, including a painfully long eye blink and someone high-fiving a pickleball paddle, make the AI difficult to ignore.
A jingle in the background – also likely AI-generated – accuses Blackburn of accepting payments to drive bills that benefit pharmaceutical companies.
“Our pain-killing pills wouldn’t sell, so we paid Senator Marsha Blackburn to pass our bills,” the song goes.
The ad later lists 20,000 overdose deaths in Tennessee, the opioid epidemic, “billions for drug companies and millions for Blackburn” as side effects of “Paying Marsha.”
The ad ends with an unconvincing image of Blackburn standing in front of the Capitol, calling her “Queen Pharma Mama” and listing her D.C. office phone number on the screen.
Under a new state law, ads that run close to elections and exceed certain costs will be required to disclose AI deepfakes. Given the proximity to the primary and the nearly $500,000 the PAC spent in Nashville alone, a state elections official said banner On Tuesday, he said the ad would be a “slam dunk” to get a hearing with the Tennessee Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance if someone filed a complaint against the PAC.
Lawyers from the firm Holtzman Vogul, which represents Blackburn and her campaign, sent a letter to the PAC on Monday calling for it to stop running the spot, suggesting that Blackburn struck quid pro quo deals with drug companies and offered Senate votes in exchange for political donations.
“The message is unmistakable: the advertisement accuses Senator Blackburn of accepting money in exchange for official legislative action. These are direct allegations of bribery and corruption in return, which are inherently defamatory,” the letter said.
While public figures generally face greater scrutiny, parody and criticism, making it more difficult to prove libel or slander, Blackburn’s lawyers argued that baselessly accusing an elected official of bribery or public corruption can be defamatory.
According to OpenSecrets, Blackburn has received at least $1.3 million in donations from the pharmaceutical industry during her time in Congress and has been criticized for taking positions that benefit drug companies’ profits. There were no credible allegations of any related illegal activity, such as accepting bribes.
The letter also calls on the PAC to substantiate the claims and accuses it of using “synthetic media,” including a deepfake of Blackburn’s likeness in the ad.
Under the state’s Deepfakes Transparency in Political Advertising Act, which went into effect July 1, ads are required to disclose the use of deepfakes. This is the first state election cycle since the law was introduced and Blackburn’s campaign is the first to question the compliance of an ad.
This election cycle has seen a rise in AI-generated ads and deepfakes of politicians, a new and largely unregulated mutation in the already dubious world of PAC attack ads. Blackburn supports national regulations on artificial intelligence and other technology sectors.
The American Exceptionalism Institute, the PAC responsible for the slop ad, is a dark-money PAC based in Virginia that has spent millions on Republican campaigns, including supporting the campaign of former Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler.
Public disclosures show the PAC spent more than $495,000 on advertising on four Nashville news stations in the lead-up to the primary and purchased 467 time slots for the ads. This would not reflect other spending in markets across the state.
According to Blackburn’s campaign, Comcast and Viamedia have pulled the ad. Nevertheless, a spokesman criticized the use of black money and the use of AI in the ad.
“This shady money group operates in the dark while their defamatory ad fails to meet the most basic AI disclaimer requirements,” spokesperson Abbi Sigler wrote in an emailed statement on Tuesday. “The Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance must act immediately to provide Tennesseans the transparency they need.”
Blackburn’s campaign also sent a letter to the state’s Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance requesting information about the PAC that ran the ad.
Blackburn’s primary opponent, Congressman John Rose, also became the target of attack ads from a new PAC with financial ties to Blackburn’s Senate campaign but no known use of AI.
This article first appeared on Nashville Banner and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
https://nashvillebanner.com/2026/07/28/marsha-blackburn-dark-money-pac-pharmaceutical-industry/
