MAGA Republicans — who have been largely quiet around the dangers posed by artificial intelligence technology when it comes to the upcoming elections — might be jumping on the anti-AI bandwagon – but only after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) presidential campaign posted what appears to be a partially AI-generated ad this week, attacking former President Donald Trump.
And here I thought it was Trump who was the fake Presidential candidate.
Opposed to AI? Hell they are the party of AI!
“Smearing Donald Trump with fake AI images is completely unacceptable,” Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH)…
“Those fake AI campaign ads need to be taken down immediately,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) echoed.
Preview of GOP when the avalanche of fake AI attacks on President Biden appear – and they will:
I think the safest approach would be:
It would obviously be best to skip to #2 right away, but any person who today claims they are knowledgeable enough to do that is both a fool and a con artist.
We don’t know what the near-future of AI will bring, and we probably haven’t given enough thought to what kinds of disclaimers or restrictions will be necessary to preserve a functioning democracy in the era of AI, and it’s patently absurd to leave this powerful stuff completely unchecked while we do our homework. Until we know how to make it safe, it has to be categorically off-limits in domains that we value.
It appears that James O’Keefe has a whole new field of employment opportunities.
An AI ad isn’t any different than a Photoshopped ad, or even one where video/audio are strung together in bits to create a highly misleading item. If enough time is taken, any manual setup can do better than AI, and I’d bet that the AI ones we have seen have been touched up by people. AI allows these things to be created more quickly, but that’s really the only difference…and, yes, that could mean that fakes flood the airwaves, just as the lies already do.
We’d be better served if political ads were required to be truthful, at least when using data about the candidates…predicting that a candidate will ruin America isn’t something you can evaluate that way. The human and AI generated lies just make things worse, get rid of all of that and require facts to be presented accurately and it will make a difference.
What a bunch of whining cry babies.
Which the corrupt Roberts Court will strike down as a ‘unconstitutional impingement on first amendment rights’.
Republicans don’t oppose AI-generated disinformation. They just oppose it being used against them.
It’s interesting to see that the extremist right-wing of the GOP (e. g. Sen. Hawley) appears ready to go all out in order to suppress AI they dislike. The unfortunate fact (for them) is that AI is going to be absolutely everywhere on the Internet - search engines, social media, advertising, video, email… Everywhere. So if the idea is to restrict “companies from making AI technology available to children or advertising it to them” the only solution is to forbid Internet access to anyone under 18. And if there’s “a legal avenue for individuals to sue companies over harm caused by AI models” (regardless of whether the harm is actually real) then the Internet will basically have to shut down.
All that’s not to say that there aren’t genuine dangers with AI - although those will mainly be from human misuse rather than faults in AI itself. AI technology is basically still at the primary school level. Or the Model-T level, if you prefer. But it’s rapidly improving, almost every month. This drama is going to get much more intense for a long time. The only alternative is for society to remain at the preschool or Stanley Steamer level. That’s about where most of the GOP is these days.
We’re all about to start living in “interesting times”.
I find it hard to believe any of these ads will have any impact at all. People are already saturated with so much political propaganda that they mostly just tune out any message but those they wish to believe. I also don’t see how AI can be any more convincing than photoshop in creating such propaganda.
It’s a bit like saying “AI could be used to generate a lot more porn!” So what? How could people be any more exposed to either porn or propaganda than they already are?
Better title:
Animatronic Candidate Using AI to Post Fake Trump Pics Creates Stir
The images may be “artificial”, but this episode primarily proves that nothing associated with “intelligence” applies to MAGA-world.
In sum, the fakes will continue and become more widespread, but they will only be devoted to “ratf***ing” democrats.
But fake video of President Biden is OK. These truly are the mole people. (h/t C. Pierce)
I think that stretching the truth with a few hugging images is within the artistic and ethical license governing election campaigns. I don’t think that DeSantis did anything awful. Just pushing the envelope and a hot button issue.
It’s worth noting they would be wrong about that.
A ban on AI-generated content in political ads does not stop people from saying certain things. Whatever a person wants to say with an AI ad, they can say with an ad made without AI.
“Smearing Donald Trump with fake AI images is completely unacceptable,” Sen. J.D. Vance
…the faux populist continued " Only our superPAC ads smearing Democrats are acceptable."
because it will further erode people’s trust and deliberately sow confusion and apathy
AI doesn’t do anything brand new. It just makes it easier for the talentless MAGA folk to post false ads.