Cuomo condemned over racist AI ad depicting ‘criminals for Zohran Mamdani’ | Andrew Cuomo
New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo was widely labeled a racist after his official X account posted – then deleted – an AI-generated ad depicting “criminals for Zohran Mamdani.”
Not even 20 minutes into the second town hall debate, Cuomo’s official account, @andrewcuomo, tweeted the video. It was shared by many people before being deleted.
The Cuomo and Mamdani campaigns did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.
The video, which was recorded and shared by various people, is just over two minutes long and opens with an AI iteration of Mamdani, first running through the streets of New York and then eating rice with his hands.
It goes on to show a black man in a keffiyeh shoplifting, a man abusing a woman, a sex trafficker, a drug dealer and others, all showing support for Mamdani.
Reactions to the video, posted online by journalist Prem Thakker, were swift and negative.
Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, a grassroots organization that advocates for gun violence prevention, called it “so crude and full of racist stereotypes, including a black man dressed like a pimp trafficking a car full of white women. Cuomo needs to be thrown into the ashes of history.”
Laila Al-Arian, executive producer of Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines, pointed out the keffiyeh imagery and asked on »
Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa, associate professor of film and media studies at Seattle University, wrote of Blsky: “It’s next-level AI fascist slop. It’s also such a weird ‘greatest hits’ of creepy stereotypes of New York history.”
Antonia Hylton, co-anchor of MSNBC’s The Weekend: Primetime, said, “Well, it’s sad. And kind of racist.”
This video follows a trend from the Cuomo campaign, which released a handful of AI-generated videos before November 4. In a video from early October, Cuomo was seen doing various jobs around New York City, including driving a subway car, trading on the New York Stock Exchange and washing high-rise windows.
In response, Mamdani posted on Instagram: “In a city of world-class artists and production teams looking for the next gig, Andrew Cuomo made a TV commercial the same way he wrote his housing policy: with AI. Then again, maybe a fake Cuomo is better than the real one?”
Just this week, Cuomo shared a video featuring AI-generated Bill de Blasio and, once again, Mamdani. That video attempted to portray Mamdani as a “mini” De Blasio and focused on a moment from the first debate where Cuomo compared the former mayor to the mayoral candidate.
