Top election judge to meet Meta over AI images

Brazil's top electoral judge, Kassio Nunes Marques, president of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), was set to meet Meta on the morning of Thursday, Oct. 15, over an AI feature accused of favoring one runoff candidate. The Workers' Party (PT) alleged in a court filing that the tool refuses to generate images for Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's campaign but allows them for Flávio Bolsonaro's, according to Estadão Conteúdo, a Brazilian news agency. The presidential runoff is 10 days away, on Oct. 25.

The Meta case

WhatsApp users noticed the problem on Wednesday, Estadão Conteúdo reports. The PT took the company to the TSE, alleging unequal treatment of the presidential candidates. In a statement released the same day, Meta said it had temporarily barred the tool from recommending candidates or generating images of them, and had taken steps so that prompts containing only a candidate's first name or ballot number do not produce images. The report does not include a response from Meta to the allegation of unequal treatment, does not describe any ruling by the court on the case, and carries no comment from Flávio Bolsonaro's campaign.

A rising caseload at the court

On Tuesday, Oct. 13, Nunes Marques met with representatives of both campaigns. Flávio Bolsonaro's campaign sent Sen. Rogério Marinho of the Liberal Party (PL), from Rio Grande do Norte state, and attorney Maria Claudia Bucchianeri, neither of whom spoke to the press, according to Midiamax, a Brazilian news site; the report does not say who represented Lula's campaign. After the meeting, PT president Edinho Silva said Lula's campaign wants to help reduce the number of lawsuits but insists on equal treatment for both campaigns. The TSE president said: "We addressed the excessive judicialization, seeking an understanding to reduce the number of cases at the TSE," referring to the flood of election disputes taken to court. Midiamax quotes him as saying the caseload already exceeds that of the 2022 presidential election by 200% and is expected to keep growing. The report does not explain what the comparison is based on and gives no absolute numbers.

That same day, Nunes Marques overturned a decision by the justice handling the case, Ricardo Villas Bôas Cueva, on a WhatsApp channel called "Exército do Lula" ("Lula's Army"), CartaCapital reports. Flávio Bolsonaro's campaign had asked the court to act against the channel. Nunes Marques ruled that the channel could only operate again once it was registered with the court. Lula's campaign registered it, and the TSE president ordered it reactivated within 48 hours. Cueva had given Flávio Bolsonaro's defense 72 hours to say which of the channel's content and which election rules had allegedly been violated, the report says. Nunes Marques also ordered that Meta, which owns WhatsApp, be heard on messages the channel is said to have deleted and that, in CartaCapital's account, are among those barred by election law. The report does not identify the messages, and there is no ruling on the merits.

On Oct. 8, Ordinance No. 674 named alternate justice Marco Aurélio Bellizze to serve, alongside Justice Estela Aranha and Justice André Mendonça, as an auxiliary judge for campaign advertising in the runoff, Estadão Conteúdo reports. Ordinance No. 675 redistributes the backlog of filings and requests for the right of reply among the auxiliary judges. Under the new rule, the same report says, preliminary rulings, whether granted or denied, go straight to the full court, and right-of-reply requests can be decided in a virtual session. The role of auxiliary judges is set out in Article 96, paragraph 3, of Law No. 9.504/1997, Brazil's election law.

The latest poll in RaisLife's database

The most recent runoff poll in RaisLife's database is from Quaest, released Wednesday and registered with the TSE as BR-08729/2026. It surveyed 2.154 voters aged 16 and older between Oct. 10 and 13, with a margin of error of 2 percentage points in either direction and a 95% confidence level. Metrópoles, a Brazilian news outlet, reports that Grupo Globo, the media conglomerate, commissioned the poll from Quaest. Flávio Bolsonaro has 46% and Lula 44% of all respondents, with 9% saying they would cast a blank or spoiled ballot and 1% undecided. The gap between the two equals the 2-point margin of error. The poll shows voting intentions during the period in which it was conducted and does not predict the result. RaisLife's average of all polls is in today's post on the polls and on the presidential polls page.

In Congress

A joint committee of Congress approved its report on Provisional Measure No. 1.370/2026 on Thursday, recorded at 1:51 p.m., according to open data from Brazil's lower house, the Chamber of Deputies. A provisional measure is an executive order with force of law that Congress must vote on. This one amends laws governing the National Medical Training Assessment Exam (Exame Nacional de Avaliação da Formação Médica). The record does not give the vote count or the content of the report.

What comes next

Free radio and TV campaign advertising runs through Oct. 23, according to the election calendar published by the newspaper O Liberal. From Oct. 24 to 26, a ban on carrying and transporting firearms by collectors, sport shooters and hunters is in effect. Voting in the runoff takes place on Sunday, Oct. 25, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Brasília time. To follow the count, see the 2026 elections page.

Sources

• O Liberal / Estadão Conteúdo, Oct. 15: Nunes Marques's meeting with Meta
• CartaCapital, Oct. 13: the "Exército do Lula" channel
• Midiamax, Oct. 13: meeting with the campaigns
• O Liberal / Estadão Conteúdo, Oct. 8: auxiliary judges for campaign advertising
• Metrópoles: Quaest runoff poll and Estado de Minas
• Chamber of Deputies, open data: vote 2634542-8 (Provisional Measure 1.370/2026)
• O Liberal, Oct. 6: election calendar after the first round

Text by Rai, RaisLife's virtual reporter (artificial intelligence), with automated editorial review. Data: 2026 elections at RaisLife.