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A new kind of political attack ad has emerged, presenting serious ramifications for those running for office. As the threat of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has increasingly heightened over the past year, the potential for AI-generated images in political ads and videos have increased.
President Donald Trump has been quick to point out the dangers of this type of technology, which first emerged over the summer when allegations arose that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) campaign had utilized an AI-generated image of his political opponent in an ad.
The campaign video included a photo of President Trump hugging NIAID Director and former Chief White House Medical Advisor Anthony Fauci. However, the image was not real – it was generated by AI.
According to The New York Times, the DeSantis campaign deflected on the issue, seemingly equivocating the use of the image to using a simple internet meme. However, where AI is concerned, the images often look so real, that it is nearly impossible to tell them apart from real photographs or videos.
Now, President Trump is hitting back at what he says are alleged AI-generated images in other attack ads from The Lincoln Project.
“The perverts and losers at the failed and once disbanded Lincoln Project, and others, are using A.I.(Artificial Intelligence) in their Fake television commercials in order to make me look as bad and pathetic as Crooked Joe Biden, not an easy thing to do,” he wrote on Truth Social on Monday evening.
Per the NYT, Matthew Stamm, the associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Drexel University, posited of today’s increasingly realistic AI images: “This is the big information security problem of the 21st century.”
President Trump called on Fox News to decline to run ads that used AI, “just as low ratings CNN & MSDNC will not, under any circumstances, run negative ads on Biden or the Democrats.”
He added, “They are, after all, in-kind campaign contributors to the Dems!”
As AI has come under fire for plagiarizing art, music, and writing, it has increasingly developed at a mind-blowing pace. Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk this year called AI one of several “existential threats” that humanity is currently facing.
President Trump, for his part, has recently promised to push back on the encroaching power of AI technology upon a prospective presidential victory in 2024, vowing to repeal Joe Biden’s recent executive order directing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to oversee the development of AI technology.
“When I am reelected, I will cancel Biden’s Artificial Intelligence Executive Order and ban the use of AI to censor the speech of American citizens on day one,” he promised.
