History in Making: Political Campaigns in the Era of Artificial Intelligence-Generated Content
Ehsan-Ul Haq, Yiming Zhu, Pan Hui, Gareth Tyson · 2024
Web 2.0 provided impactful tools, based on user-generated content, for political campaigns and opinion engineering. However, in recent months, AI advances and the ease of access to AI-generated content (AIGC) have led to a paradigm shift in political participation by politicians and electorates alike. This paper aims to explore a historical analysis of this shift. We provide anecdotal evidence of new trends, potential impact, and challenges. We discuss the usage of AIGC in political campaigns, and how AIGC is used as a substitute for incarcerated politicians. Such a usage presents novel ways for leaders to reach the public and keep them politically active. However, AIGC also has risks when used for disinformation, such as DeepFake media and caller bots, to undermine and malign the opponents. On the other hand, the evidence shows that governments can nudge AIGC content by censoring Internet services. We also report challenges facing AIGC usage, such as model bias and hallucinations, along with a governance perspective on ethics and regulations.