Political Candidates Spending An Obscene Amount of Money on AI-Generated Election Slop
"I think what we're seeing with AI has surprised even us." The post Political Candidates Spending An Obscene Amount of Money on AI-Generated Election Slop appeared first on Futurism .
Political campaigns are increasingly pouring a fortune into AI-generated election ads, according to recent reporting. The New York Times revealed that such ads have generated over $137 million in promotional revenue alone in the current election cycle, accounting for nearly a quarter of total spending on midterm political advertising.
This spending, totaling $565 million across all US House and Senate campaigns, has seen 220 AI-generated ads produced by political action groups thus far. Republican groups have been the primary drivers, producing 80% of these AI ads, while Democrats have contributed the remaining 20%.
An example of this trend comes from Make Oklahoma Great Again, a Republican political action committee (PAC), which spent over $200,000 on TV time for an AI-generated commercial featuring a Republican gubernatorial candidate disparaging Hillary Clinton and portraying a disgruntled Donald Trump. Notably, the PAC invested heavily in promoting this AI ad, illustrating the extent to which political spending on this technology has escalated.
Erika Franklin Fowler, a professor of government and co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, expressed surprise at the rapid adoption of AI in political campaigns. She highlighted the difficulty in detecting AI-generated content in ads, as some viewers might not even realize the involvement of artificial intelligence based solely on the ad's presentation.
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