By Alice Lee and Sam Howard
What’s happening: An AI deepfake pushed by a Russian influence campaign and circulating since last night on social media depicts a supposed former student of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico accusing him of sexual assault, NewsGuard has found.
The fake has already fooled some AI chatbots. For example, NewsGuard ran the claim by Google’s AI Overview, which responded that the supposed former student “published a video claiming that James Talarico sexually assaulted him in 2012.” Two other leading AI tools prompted by NewsGuard, Google’s Gemini and Microsoft’s Copilot, also repeated the false claim that the former student had made the accusation.
At 9 a.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, Oct. 21, NewsGuard searched Lewis and Talarico’s names on Google and found that Google’s AI Overview stated in response: “In October 2026, Zyon Lewis published a video claiming that James Talarico sexually assaulted him in 2012.”
The AI Overview cited articles from ABC News and San Antonio NBC affiliate KTAL — but neither article actually mentioned the allegation. The ABC News article was from May 2026 and covered Talarico’s views on religion and gender. The KTAL article was published Oct. 15, 2026, under the title “What to know about James Talarico, who runs for U.S. senator from Texas” and covered Talarico’s biography and policy views.
The fake videos: On Oct. 20, X account @Zyon_Lewis_5 posted two videos purportedly showing Zyon Lewis, who in the...
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