Name: Brainstorm AI London 2024: Three Ways AI Is Already Impacting Political Campaigns
Uploaded: 2024-04-16
Duration: 5 min 7 s
Description: Presenter: Julius van de Laar, Political Strategist and Communications Consultant, Van De Laar Campaigning

Presenter: Julius van de Laar, Political Strategist and Communications Consultant, Van De Laar Campaigning 

Brainstorm AI London 2024: Three Ways AI Is Already Impacting Political Campaigns

Photography by Joe Maher/Fortune Brainstorm AI

Conferences

Thanks for having me. Great. Uh I thought we'll dive right in and talk about A I and political campaigns who's excited about the upcoming US election? Anyone? Yes, I thought so. Right. A couple of people very hyped up. Obviously, a lot of things are happening and uh not just in the run up to the election campaign, but anyone watching the news last night, right. Donald Trump is right right here in the courtroom in New York City. And obviously we've seen these images many times before, right? You've seen this about a year ago running away from the cops, right? So there's another one right there, right? Getting restrained. It's a Donald. Now, of course, these are deep fakes. Let me just put that disclaimer on there and we'll be talking about deep fakes, which is of course the big shiny thing in this election cycle. A lot of people talk about deep fakes. But I thought, you know, as we're getting into this courtroom campaign that is unveiling right now, Donald Trump will not be televised because, you know New York City law says you can't have cameras in the courtroom, unlike we do over here Uh But Donald Trump obviously is creating the images himself. So if you move over to his Instagram feed, you'll see pictures like this right here. Uh Obviously, you guys cannot Conal it with what the message might be, which is just like Jesus Christ. Uh He is in there, uh you know, uh taking it for us. So, um that is of course, not a real image uh is probably created by mid journey or some other uh A I uh tool. Uh But I thought we'll, we'll, we'll get into this campaign. Now. It's two and two days until election day, November 5th. And when we take a look at the polls right now, um New York Times had a poll coming out this last weekend and we see it's a pretty tight race. Trump is still ahead. He's had about four or five points in April. Now, Biden is catching up was probably some of that good spirit from the State of the Union address. But I thought, you know, in a campaign where it's won by 44,000 votes, at least that was the margin in 2020. You know, we can all sort of figure out this is going to be an incredibly tight campaign and it probably will come down to just a few votes in just a few counties in just a few swing states. So A I might actually make the difference in this campaign. We're going to talk about that. In just a minute on a panel. But given the fact that A I politics is already advancing and given the fact that many votes have already been cast this year, especially in the primaries, I thought we'll go back to the beginning of the year when the Democratic primary took place in New Hampshire. Now we all know who won the New Hampshire primary for the Democrats. Who was it, it was the sitting president, of course, but in the lead up to that vote, there were a couple of campaigns taking place and one of them was a robocall. Have you guys ever received a robocall? Many of you? Anyone from the US in, in this room? What state do you live in? You haven't gotten robo calls. So you're probably not in a swing state. But if you're in a swing state, chances are your phone is blowing up many times a day. You know, just a voice coming online telling you, hey, this is Barack Obama or this is Donald Trump or this is surrogate for the campaign. Please make sure you go out and vote. So I thought we're listening to one of the robocalls that was placed right in the lead up to the new Hampshire campaign. Take a listen, what a bunch of malarkey. We know the value of voting democratic on our votes count. It's important that you save your vote for the November election. We'll need your help in electing Democrats up and down the ticket voting. This Tuesday only enables the Republicans in their quest to elect Donald Trump. Again, your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday. So the message is pretty clear, Joe Biden is telling you to stay at home. Right. And you know, there are thoughts about Republicans being worried that Democrats might enter the Republican primary and so that Robocall was placed. Now, did this make a big difference in the vote? No, it didn't. I think it's a nice way of looking at how deep fakes might impact the campaign. We can only imagine what might take place in a close election if you might receive a Robocall one day ahead of or on election day telling you to stay home because there may have been a terrible car accident or bad weather coming up or what have you. So we'll talk about that in a moment, but I've got 36 seconds left. So I thought I'll talk about, you know, how easy it is to create that. I understand we had the CEO from 11 labs yesterday today. And Wire magazine actually reported that the robocall you just heard was created with the tool 1111 laps. And so when you take a look how easy it is, I'm not going to play it through, but you can actually do with the free version, upload a few sound bites from President Biden or President Trump or any of you guys and actually create that deep fake in just a matter of moments. So with that, I think we're going to switch over and talk about not only deep fakes but what's underneath and how it might impact this next election campaign. Thanks so much. Thank you.