AINEWS
Brazil's top electoral court will decide whether a 'this is not me' disclaimer brings the AI recreation inside the country's deepfake ban.
When Flávio Bolsonaro's presidential campaign launch opened on Saturday in Brazil, the stage did not belong to the senator. A giant screen projected a synthetic recreation of his father, the jailed former president Jair Bolsonaro, addressing the crowd in a voice the campaign itself described as artificial.
The clip, captured on YouTube and cited by Gizmodo, opened with a literal disclaimer: "What you see here is not me. This is a simulation of my image and my voice using artificial intelligence." The synthetic Jair went on to call Flávio "flesh of my flesh" and ask the crowd to vote for him in Brazil's October 4 presidential election. The campaign is now arguing before the country's top electoral court that the disclosure brings the video inside the law. The court has not yet answered that question, and the answer will be the first time a top court has read a national deepfake ban against a labeled disclosure.
Brazil's Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE) banned AI deepfakes for political purposes in Resolução nº 23.755 of 2 March 2026, with violations carrying the risk of disqualifying a candidacy. The campaign's defense, reported by Valor International, is that the on-screen disclosure satisfies whatever transparency floor the resolution sets. That argument is now the strongest legal line Flávio has.
Jair Bolsonaro has been under house arrest in Brasília since September 2025, serving a 27-year sentence upheld by Brazil's Supreme Federal Court (STF) for plotting a military coup after losing the 2022 election to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. One condition of that arrest is a complete ban on social media or any other public communication, a restriction the AI clone appearance could breach on his behalf.
His lawyer, Paulo Cunha Bueno, wrote on X on Wednesday that his client "did not authorize the use of his image and voice for the production of the video created through artificial intelligence" and "could not have done so" because he is restricted from seeing visitors. STF Justice Alexandre de Moraes has now given Bolsonaro's defense 48 hours to formally explain whether the use of the ex-president's image and voice was authorized, and Supreme Court Justice Nunes Marques has been named relator — the justice assigned to write the court's opinion — of the Workers' Party (PT) action against the video.
STF and TSE ministers told G1 on Wednesday that Nunes Marques has no realistic path other than punishing Flávio Bolsonaro. That is not a ruling, but it is the kind of intra-court signal that tends to harden a relator's first draft into a final one.
Brazil's resolution does not, on its face, carve out a safe harbor for synthetic political speech preceded by a clear disclosure. The campaign is asking the court to read one in. If the TSE accepts that reading, the rule for the October 4 election becomes: a deepfake is allowed if it is openly labeled. If the court rejects it, Flávio's candidacy is the first casualty, and every other democracy writing an AI-disclosure clause is drafting against a Brazilian record rather than a blank page.
That choice now sits with Nunes Marques. Moraes's 48-hour order expires this week, and the PT action is already on his desk.