An Eau Claire woman has filed a complaint with the Wisconsin Ethics Commission accusing U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden of violating state law by posting an AI-generated image of his Democratic opponent, Rebecca Cooke, without disclosing that it was computer-generated. The complaint, filed by Cassandra Butzler on Thursday, Oct. 22, centers on a graphic the Van Orden campaign posted ahead of the pair's Oct. 20 debate in the race for Wisconsin's 3rd Congressional District.
According to WEAU, the complaint alleges Van Orden posted an AI-generated graphic of Cooke without disclosing that it was AI-generated, which Butzler says runs afoul of a 2024 state law requiring political advertisements containing artificial intelligence to be clearly labeled. The Van Orden campaign disputes that characterization entirely. As reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the campaign says it simply used a screenshot of that moment, taken from a television interview, rather than anything AI-generated.
The dispute over the image's origin remains unresolved, with each side offering a conflicting account. Per WisPolitics, the Van Orden campaign maintains the image used in the graphic is a photograph of Rebecca Cooke taken during a May interview with News 8, while the ethics complaint insists the graphic was AI-generated and went undisclosed.
A Longer Fight Over Deepfakes
Thursday's complaint did not emerge in a vacuum. Cooke's attorneys sent Van Orden a cease-and-desist letter on Sept. 30 over what the campaign called repeated posting of defamatory videos depicting Cooke saying and doing things that are, in the letter's words, “pure fiction,” the same WEAU report notes. One video cited in that dispute showed Cooke appearing to say she was running for Congress to take advantage of corruption and provide free health care to undocumented immigrants, according to Wisconsin Public Radio. Another video, posted starting Aug. 4, depicted Cooke typing on a giant calculator, per the Journal Sentinel's reporting.
The cease-and-desist letter warned that if Van Orden continued running what it described as a campaign against an AI deepfake strawman, Cooke's team would evaluate all legal options to address the misconduct, WEAU reported. Cooke has publicly accused Van Orden of posting AI-generated deepfakes instead of offering solutions to working families and said he has violated Wisconsin ethics rules, according to the Urban Milwaukee report by Urban Milwaukee, which was originally published by the Wisconsin Examiner.
Van Orden Camp Calls It a Stunt
Van Orden has dismissed the complaints about his AI use as a stunt. His spokesperson, Grace Kim, went further, telling the La Crosse Tribune, “Rebecca Cooke's ethics complaint is nothing more than a cheap publicity stunt.” Kim also said the image at the center of the complaint was not an AI image but was instead taken from an interview with a television station earlier this year.
Cooke has her own pointed response to the broader pattern of AI content from the Van Orden campaign. In a post cited by the Journal Sentinel, Cooke said, “This sort of slop is what frustrates people on both sides of the aisle.” Van Orden has posted AI-generated photos and videos on social media throughout much of the campaign cycle, and some of his posts on the platform X carried an automatic label identifying them as made with Grok Imagine.
Does Wisconsin's AI Law Even Apply?
Whether any of this runs afoul of Wisconsin law is far from settled. The same Yahoo News review found that the state's AI-disclosure statute generally doesn't cover what candidates post on social media if that content isn't paid for using campaign funds — meaning Van Orden's posts may not be subject to the 2024 law because they don't qualify as advertisements in the first place. The Wisconsin Ethics Commission says on its website that it has jurisdiction over complaints involving specific chapters of state statute, and the law itself defines “synthetic media” as audio or video content substantially produced by generative artificial intelligence, according to Wisconsin's legislative code — a definition that notably centers on audio and video rather than still photographs or graphics.
Enforcement of the law has been exceedingly rare. The Yahoo News review found the commission has received and investigated only one complaint involving a possible violation of the AI-disclosure law since 2024, and ultimately dismissed it. That earlier case involved Republican Brad Schimel's 2025 campaign, and the commission found sufficient evidence to proceed with the complaint.
The fight over Van Orden's use of AI also fits a wider national pattern. The Wesleyan Media Project identified 164 political advertisements generated or enhanced with AI during this election cycle, though the report likely undercounted the true total, according to USA Today. An Anchor Change study from May found 87% of strategists and campaigners now use AI to help generate creative graphics, text and visuals for ads, and Wesleyan Media Project data suggests Republican-aligned groups are more likely than Democratic groups to use AI in political advertising. Some states have passed laws prohibiting deepfakes or requiring disclosures.
Cooke, who lost the 2022 Democratic primary for the 3rd District to Brad Pfaff and then lost the 2024 general election to Van Orden by about three percentage points, is again challenging him this cycle. For now, Butzler's complaint sits with the Wisconsin Ethics Commission, with no indication yet of how — or whether — the agency will resolve the dispute over what exactly voters in the 3rd District saw in that debate-week graphic.
