Ken Paxton’s new anti-trans attack on James Talarico is literally fake

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s campaign has apparently decided that James Talarico’s real words are insufficient for its purposes. So it has manufactured new ones.The Republican U.S. Senate nominee released an artificial intelligence-generated video that depicts a fake Talarico rewriting the Bible and delivering a seamless monologue about gender and Christianity — a performance the Democratic state lawmaker never gave.The ad, titled “King James,” begins with the digital candidate declaring, “In the beginning, God was nonbinary.” It proceeds to have him say that God created six genders, describe Jesus as a “radical feminist,” and call himself “a Christian who hates Christianity.”Related: Republicans run bizarre AI deepfake ad showing James Talarico singing about trans kidsA narrator pronounces Talarico “wrong for Texas” and “wrong for America.” Paxton then appears on screen and says that he approved the message.Its construction blurs the boundary between Talarico’s actual views and statements manufactured by Paxton’s campaign. The video combines fragments of remarks Talarico has made about Christianity, God, and gender, removes them from their original contexts, alters some of his wording, and scripts them into a speech he never delivered.The Advocate asked the Paxton campaign why it manufactured footage of Talarico instead of using authentic video and his actual words in context.The Paxton campaign did not respond to The Advocate’s questions.Related: Ken Paxton accuses James Talarico of flip-flopping on trans issuesThe deepfake builds its caricature from positions that have made Talarico a particular object of fury on the Christian right, including his inclusive theology, his rejection of Christian nationalism, and his defense of LGBTQ+ people.Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian, has said that God is nonbinary. He later explained that he meant God transcends gender — an idea consistent with his Mainline Protestant tradition