AI attack ads are flooding Australian social media before Victoria's election. Nobody knows who paid for them.

Key points

• Unidentified groups are running AI-generated political attack ads on social media ahead of Victoria's state election.
• The ads outspend both major parties on digital platforms, according to reporting by The Guardian.
• Scenarios depicted include a machete-wielding robber at a petrol station and a woman giving birth on a roadside because ambulances could not reach her.
• The ads echo talking points used by the opposition but no direct link to any party has been confirmed.
• Australian electoral law does not require online political advertisers to fully disclose who funds them.

Picture this. A person in a balaclava, a knitted mask that covers the whole face, walks into a petrol station swinging a machete. The worker panics. Then the attacker firebombs the building on the way out. It looks like news footage. It is not. It is a computer-generated video built to make Victorian voters frightened before they head to the polls.

That ad, and dozens like it, have been spreading across social media platforms in the weeks before Victoria's state election. Another spot shows a woman giving birth on the side of a road because ambulance ramping, the practice where paramedics wait outside overcrowded hospital emergency departments and cannot take new calls, left her stranded. Potholes so deep they stop a fire truck also feature.

Who is actually behind them?

Nobody is saying. The ads carry political messages that align closely with opposition criticism of the current Labor government, but no party has claimed them. Researchers and journalists who investigated the ads, first reported by The Guardian, traced them to pages and accounts that give almost no information about their operators.

This matters because the spending is serious. These unknown groups are putting more money behind digital ads than Victoria's established political parties. That kind of reach, bought quietly, can shift what tens of thousands of people see every day.

Why can't someone just find out who paid?

Australian law has not kept pace with online advertising. Television and radio ads must clearly state who authorised them. Online political ads face far weaker rules. A group can fund a flood of targeted social media video and, as long as it stays below certain spending thresholds or uses the right legal structures, it may never have to tell the public where the money came from.

AI-generated video, where software creates realistic scenes that never happened, makes this cheaper and faster than ever. Producing a convincing news-style clip once required a camera crew and actors. Now it can cost a few hundred dollars and an afternoon.

What does this mean for voters?

Treat alarming political videos on social media with the same scepticism you would give an anonymous letter dropped through your letterbox. Ask three quick questions: Does the video name who paid for it? Does it appear on any verified news outlet? Does it feel designed purely to scare rather than to inform? If the answers are no, no, and yes, you are probably looking at something built to manipulate rather than to inform.

Electoral regulators in several countries are now debating whether AI-generated political content should carry a clear label. Until those rules exist, the burden falls on the person watching.

Common questions

How can I tell if a political video is AI-generated?

Look for slight blurring around faces and hands, unnatural lighting where shadows do not quite match, and audio that sounds slightly flat. AI video tools still struggle with fingers and fine detail around hair.

Are these ads illegal?

Not necessarily. Current Australian law does not ban AI-generated political content, and online authorisation rules are weaker than those for broadcast media. That may change, but for now the ads occupy a legal grey area.