Deepfakes Already At Play In Politics, Even if Regulation Passes

With increased awareness of the powers of artificial intelligence, political campaigns and operatives are expressing concern regarding voter confusion and manipulation from Deepfakes.

Deepfakes, a subset of artificial intelligence that uses machine learning to digitally alter and manipulate the appearance of an individual in video, effectively allowing the creator to generate video content of anyone doing anything, obviously represents a major challenge to political campaigns from potential misuse.

Working to alleviate this concern to the public, regulators are slowly moving to understand artificial intelligence and forge an appropriate regulatory response.

The American Association of Political Consultants took a strong stance condemning the use of Deepfakes in political advertising, claiming the deception from Deepfakes has no place in ‘legitimate, ethical campaigns’.

However, beyond campaigns and consultants, Deepfakes are already at work impacting future elections. 

An AI-generated advertisement, shared from the Daily Show Youtube to their 10-million person audience, uses Biden’s voice to make an earnest, funny, not politically correct, and intriguing appeal for support, with top comments on the video from viewers saying: “I’d make a donation to Biden’s campaign if he would make and air this ad nationwide.”, “Ironically if he actually released this ad he probably gained votes.”, and “That’s a surprisingly effective campaign ad, actually.”
You can even watch an entire debate between Biden and Trump, entirely created by AI using Deepfakes.

With countless further similar videos circulating on Tik Tok, it is certain that of the 150 million Americans who use Tik Tok, millions of impressions from AI-created videos of candidates are reaching potential voters — far more than campaign sanctioned generated AI. 

While regulation may limit campaign usage of AI, regulating Tik Tok and social media may be a more challenging, but similarly critical, endeavor.

At Campaign Brain, we’re working on democratizing artificial intelligence for progressive political campaigns.

To learn more about how artificial intelligence can help your campaign or be leveraged for good in politics, visit us at campaignbrain.ai.