As time goes on, more politicians are realizing that “televised debate” isn’t the best way to win the hearts and minds of the voters. Consequently, they’re opting out, leaving their opponents’ invitations to 1v1 them on “read,” and instead shelling out money on other stupid campaign ideas. “What if we paid 2 consultants $20k to teach us TikTok dances?!” Eh, it might actually reach more people than a 6 PM debate on public access!

This is tough for an underdog candidate, as debates used to be a place where you could make your name known. So, what’s a candidate looking to spar with their political opponent to do? If you’re Republican John Reid, candidate for Virginia lieutenant governor, you have a televised debate anyway — and replace your opponent with AI.

As reported by The Washington Post, Reid livestreamed a “debate” to hundreds of viewers on YouTube between himself and an AI-generated version of his opponent, Democratic Sen. Ghazala F. Hashmi. Reid’s campaign claims the AI was trained on Hashmi’s past statements on the debate topics, and that Reid was not given the questions in advance.

Of course, this whole thing was just a stunt — but it also might be the future of political campaigns. Maybe, in the coming years, every candidate will just feed all their opinions into separate AIs, then have them duke it out. It can’t be worse than what we have now!

This is, without hyperbole, the best thing that's ever happened. https://t.co/hCaUy4wYvypic.twitter.com/aZfz1dAFhH

— David Weigel (@daveweigel) October 22, 2025