In what looks to be a first for American politics, the Republican National Committee released an AI-generated campaign ad yesterday in response to Joe Biden announcing his reelection bid. Although the RNC disclosed that the ad was AI-generated, the corporate media still went into freakout mode.
The 30-second ad, called “Beat Biden,” uses AI image generation to produce images of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and images of some doom-laden hypothetical scenarios if the current occupant of the White House wins re-election.
Fears about the potential of AI technology range from the mundane, like entertainment companies worried about copyright infringement, to confident predictions from AI experts that the technology will bring about the end of the human race.
So, it didn’t take long for leftist media to start fearmongering about the GOP’s ad.
“The GOP’s AI-Generated Biden Attack Ad Really Is a Warning About the Future,” was the headline at Mother Jones. MSNBC immediately raised the specter of regulations, asking “what – if any – regulations will there be on political advertising that dupes people into thinking that imagined scenarios are real, or that a politician has committed some kind of act that they haven’t.”
The RNC disclosed that the images in its ad weren’t real, but MSNBC is not satisfied, asking “what if people don’t always read the fine print — or there isn’t any?”
Forbes called the ad “eerie,” saying it represents “the latest sign that computer-generated content could shift the political campaign landscape.”
The CCP-linked South China Morning Post also took note of the ad, focusing on its depiction of an emboldened China’s potential aggression against Taiwan (the ad features an image of the Taiwanese capital of Taipei under military attack).
Not everyone saw the ad as heralding a new age of misinformation. Despite the scary headline, Mother Jones deputy editor James West noted that it was quite easy to tell that the RNC’s ad was AI-generated, even without the disclosure, thanks to the video’s tell-tale signs of AI imagery like meaningless words and misplaced objects.
And NBC was less down on AI-generated political imagery two weeks ago, when it gave national attention to social media pranksters using AI to depict Republican politicians in drag outfits.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.