The 2026 election campaign revolved clearly around Prime Minister Orbán Viktor: although the Fidesz campaign was officially led by Orbán Balázs, people close to the party say that this was largely on paper and that Orbán himself acted as the de facto leader. His central role highlighted both the strengths and the faults of the campaign's communication.
-
One notable episode occurred last November in an interview conducted by Rónai Egon: at the end of the conversation Orbán showed the camera a doodled sheet of paper he had been scribbling on during the interview. Debate followed immediately about the meaning of the paper; the motif was discussed in public for days. Orbán described the paper as a kind of “secret language” that helps him concentrate.
-
In early March the campaign's messaging coalesced around a manipulatively edited video: a man described as a former intelligence officer appeared to speak incoherently, and Orbán followed with a video in which he phoned his children and warned them that Ukrainians were threatening their lives. Observers found the staging and acting awkward and uncomfortable.
-
At the end of March in Győr, Orbán publicly argued with a few dozen counter-protesters; he shouted that they were not standing with Hungarians and accused them of wanting to send Hungarian money to Ukraine. Observers noted his tired, hoarse appearance.
The AI frenzy: machine‑generated content and its effects
More than three years after the arrival of ChatGPT, image, video and music generating AI tools played a prominent role in the campaign. This produced a dual effect: some saw the surge of generated content as an outpouring of tasteless, soulless, cheap mass-produced material, while others used AI actively for entertainment, deception, manipulation or simple resource savings.
AI-produced items in the campaign took extreme and often absurd forms: videos that depicted the LGBTIQ community in demonizing ways, materials showing bleeding or dead soldiers, and numerous deepfake variants involving Magyar Péter in mocking or humiliating scenarios (for example, a Magyar Péter portrayed cutting a border fence, a Magyar Péter in various airport scenes, a Ken‑doll‑like Magyar Péter, and fabricated scenes with political actors such as Dobrev Klára or Ursula von der Leyen).
The peak of the phenomenon was an AI‑generated Fidesz campaign song sourced from Vadhajtások and shared by Orbán in a notorious car video. The track used a mulatós techno base and lyrics like “Kizöldült a magyar vidék, tavasz van / Nem bízunk mi a külföldi szavakban,” which many found deliberately off‑putting.
Why this matters
In the 2026 campaign the combination of personality‑centered politics and a flood of AI‑created provocations produced significant cognitive dissonance in public discourse: personal appearances and artificially produced provocations intertwined, complicating voters' ability to navigate information. The campaign's most peculiar and potent moments emerged from this dual dynamic, making these developments decisive for how the election was perceived.
Next steps
The second round of Szájkarate 3.0 moves forward with this pairing: the “actor Orbán” versus the many AI‑manufactured Magyar Péter variants — including ones showing him eating someone else's cake — have become one of the campaign's defining narratives. In upcoming stages of the contest it will become clearer whether this double motif remains dominant and how participants and the public respond to further machine‑generated material.
