Despite how cringeworthy they are, political campaigns have spent $137 million on A.I.-generated ads for the midterms. And the lack of regulation on these ads is warping our sense of what’s real. The Opinion writer Rotimi Adeoye argues that while this kind of political satire falls under First Amendment protection, “you should be free to fake a politician, but you shouldn’t be free to hide the fact that you did.”

The midterms are the first elections in which artificial intelligence is integrated into every major social media platform. Efforts to blunt its harms are uneven.

© Nicole Craine for The New York Times