A drag queen recognized herself in a GOP attack ad. The video was fake.

Drag queen Nova Jynah instantly recognized the AI-generated version of herself in a new political advertisement last month from the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Her likeness was depicted barn dancing with Jamie Ager, the Democratic congressional candidate vying to represent North Carolina’s Asheville area, where Jynah lives and frequently performs.

“I have that off-shoulder purple dress sitting in my closet right now. I still own that wig,” she told the Washington Post. “That’s my makeup. That’s my nose!”

Jynah and several fellow Asheville drag performers had become subjects of AI creations in the 2026 election cycle — the latest of hundreds of political ads created with AI, collectively backed by hundreds of millions of dollars in mostly Republican spending. In the scramble of the campaign’s final days, AI-generated videos have included depictions not only of politicians, but also of regular people.

Several performers shown in the Republican ad — including Jynah, a “comedy queen” and former Miss Blue Ridge Pride — have issued cease-and-desist demands to the NRCC, which paid for the ad, and GOP congressional candidate Jennifer Balkcom, who approved the ad.

The NRCC told the Post that it stands by the spot. Balkcom did not respond to requests for comment.

The video appears to use a photo that Jynah posted online months earlier, as well as the likenesses of other drag performers — and even Ager’s own barn, which he had used in his own campaign ad. In the Republican ad, pride flags are draped over the barn and a child is shown gawking at the performers as Abba’s “Dancing Queen” plays.

“Jamie Ager talks like you and me on TV, but he’s dancin’ with they/them,” a narrator says.

The NRCC ad showed a key theme of AI use this campaign cycle — portraying candidates as out of touch or “not like ‘us,’” said Peter Loge, director of the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs. Several states away, AI attack ads running in Michigan portrayed Abdul El-Sayed, who would be the first Muslim U.S. senator, laughing over a board game involving a map of the Middle East and a card that reads “death to America.”

Loge described the NRCC ad in North Carolina as unethical, saying, “This is a campaign making stuff up.”

“Our opponent is attacking Jamie with 100% fake, AI-generated ads,” the Ager campaign said in a statement, referring to Balkcom. “She can’t win on the truth, so she is using AI to lie.”

The TV spot, which refers to a “drag queen barn dance,” cited a Breitbart article about a 2019 advertisement for an event at Hickory Nut Gap Farm, Ager’s family business in Fairview, N.C., that listed games, costume contests, and local vendors, as well as the Beer City Sisters, a local affiliate of the national Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a protest and philanthropic group whose members wear drag.

But there’s no indication that any drag performance even happened at that 2019 event, or that any specific performers were present. Jynah, whose real name is Ethan Fletcher, was a 17-year-old high school student at the time. She didn’t attend the event, nor has she ever met Ager or been to his farm, and she was never a member of Beer City Sisters.

Jynah said it was “insanely insensitive” for Balkcom to use her likeness to “defame her potential constituent.”

Around the same time the ad debuted in North Carolina, a Republican candidate for county executive in Texas posted, and then removed, a video showing AI depictions of Black people praising him.

The AI depictions, which Daniel Wong’s campaign said showed real supporters of his, said in the six-second social media clip that Wong, the interim county judge in Fort Bend, “gave me a job,” “bought me food,” and “helped me find work,” among other things. In a caption under the video on his Facebook page, Wong thanked “these brave men and women” and praised their “loyalty.” Wong’s campaign did not respond to the Post’s requests for comment.

But the Democrat running against Wong, County Commissioner Dexter McCoy, told the Post that he had spoken to a woman whose likeness was used in the video, and that his campaign had identified three other people shown. The people were all paid poll greeters for the Wong campaign whose payment was conditional on submitting a photo of themselves at work, McCoy said. Those check-in images were used to create the video without their permission, using dialogue that the people depicted in the video never consented to, McCoy said.

“She was completely shaken, and very upset. The word she used — she felt she had been violated,” McCoy said of the woman he spoke to. “They had no expectation that those [photos] would ever be published anywhere.”

McCoy declined to share the woman’s contact information, saying she was not comfortable coming forward publicly, and the Post could not independently confirm his account. McCoy’s campaign shared a screen recording of the video with the Post.

The Wong campaign has acknowledged that the video was made with AI, and Bobby Eberle, Wong’s communications director, has said a Wong supporter made the video, and that the person claimed to have “received consent from those people” depicted in the video. It’s unclear whether the people shown in the video were paid campaign workers, or whether they knew what their AI likenesses would say.

In a public statement last month, Wong did not explain why he took the video down. Instead, he accused McCoy of having “rolled out the tired ‘race card.’”

McCoy, who is Black, said it was inappropriate for Wong to deflect blame.

“I did not make a video of Black people in the community saying things that Black folks have come to really find disgusting — stereotypes of us,” he said.

Back in Asheville, the local drag scene has rallied around the performers whose images were appropriated by the NRCC and Balkcom. One upcoming event, a Big Gay BARn Crawl, promises appearances by “REAL (not AI slop!) organic corn-fed, free-range drag entertainers,” including multiple performers who were depicted in the GOP ad.

“So round up your herd, bring your best farm-fresh outfits, make some new friends, and dance with they/them!” a social media post about the event said.

Jynah said she was leaning into what she saw as the role of drag artists — reflecting and commenting on the world around them through their performances. To that end, she’s pulling out that purple dress and working on a new number based on the artificial depiction of her.

The theme? “AI Nova isn’t real — she can’t hurt you,” she said.