Why AI Makes Political Authenticity Harder to Trust – Dr. Michael Cohen (EP 24)

AI has collapsed the cost of producing political content. Verifying it is another matter, and Cohen has spent two decades watching that gap widen from inside campaigns and classrooms. He has a three-part test for practitioners navigating it — real, authentic, factual — and this conversation is about why he thinks it has to be taught before anyone reaches the job.📻 Episode overviewCohen runs Congress in Your Pocket, teaches digital campaign strategy at Johns Hopkins and NYU, and serves as executive director of Fight Hate, which works to reduce anti-Semitism on college campuses. From all of it, his argument is the same: the ethical line gets drawn before practitioners reach the job, or it does not get drawn at all. The conversation moves through what it cost him to hold a non-partisan position when one side of the political spectrum came after him, why he believes hyper-targeting served democracy better than broadcast advertising did, and what his students are starting to find they can no longer reliably spot in AI-generated video. Real, authentic, factual — he gives students that test before they touch the tools, because by the time they are on a campaign, the pressure to cross the line is already there.🔍 Key themes discussedWhat changes when AI makes political content production fast and cheapEighteen years of answering every user email personally — and what that reveals about civic trustWhy he teaches the ethical line before students touch the toolsFight Hate and the deliberate choice to stop fighting hate onlineWhat happens when AI-generated video gets good enough to fool the generation that grew up spotting it👤 About the guestDr. Michael Cohen lectures in political campaigning and digital strategy at Johns Hopkins University and NYU, and wrote Modern Political Campaigns: How Professionalism, Technology, and Speed Have Revolutionized Elections. He founded Congress in Your Pocket in the year of the first iPhone and has run it for eighteen years, answering every user email personally throughout. He is currently executive director of Fight Hate, working to reduce anti-Semitism on college campuses through student-led offline organising.🕐 Chapter markers[00:01] The iPhone as political infrastructure[06:08] What eighteen years of personal emails taught him about trust[13:36] Why hyper-targeting may be better for democracy than broadcast advertising[19:31] Real, authentic, factual — the line and what it costs[24:35] Fight Hate: using digital tools to get people off them[37:35] The authenticity meter: how far AI video has pushed even digital nativesTimestamps approximate from transcript - adjust after final edit.🔗 LinksDr. Michael Cohen on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeldavidcohen/ Congress in Your Pocket - https://www.congressinyourpocket.comFight Hate website - https://fighthate.org/home/Modern Political Campaigns (book) - https://www.modernpoliticalcampaigns.com Blue Square Project by Robert Kraft - https://www.bluesquarealliance.org/bsa-blue-square-alliance-take-over-b/?nab=1Eva is on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/evalihotzky/