[https://fortune.com/2023/10/17/new-york-city-mnayor-eric-adams-uses-ai-to-speak-mandarin/],
used AI to translate meetings and speeches to their diverse constituents.

Even when politicians themselves aren’t speaking through AI, their constituents might be using it to listen to them. Google rolled out free translation services for an additional 110 languages [https://blog.google/products/translate/google-translate-new-languages-2024/] this summer, available to billions of people in real time through their smartphones.

Other candidates used AI’s conversational capabilities to connect with voters. U.S. politicians Asa Hutchinson [https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/news/366560453/Presidential-candidates-AI-chatbot-fields-policy-questions],
Dean Phillips [https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/01/20/openai-dean-phillips-ban-chatgpt/]
and Francis Suarez [https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/mayor-suarez-launches-an-artificial-intelligence-chatbot-for-his-presidential-campaign-3/]
deployed chatbots of themselves in their presidential primary campaigns.
The fringe candidate Jason Palmer [https://www.wsj.com/articles/underdog-who-beat-biden-in-american-samoa-used-ai-in-election-campaign-b0ce62d6]
beat Joe Biden in the American Samoan primary, at least partly thanks to
using AI-generated emails, texts, audio and video. Pakistan’s former prime minister, Imran Khan [https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/11/world/asia/imran-khan-artificial-intelligence-pakistan.html],
used an AI clone of his voice to deliver speeches from prison.

Perhaps the most effective use of this technology was in Japan, where an obscure and independent Tokyo gubernatorial candidate, Takahiro Anno [https://note.com/nishiohirokazu/n/n0c7805faabca], used an AI avatar to
respond to 8,600 questions [https://futurepolis.substack.com/p/meet-your-ai-politician-of-the-future]
from voters and managed to come in fifth among a highly competitive field
of 56 candidates.

* NUTS AND BOLTS

AIs have been used in political fundraising as well. Companies like Quiller [https://quiller.ai] and Tech for Campaigns [https://www.axios.com/2024/01/30/ai-campaign-fundraising-democrats-chatgpt] market AIs to help draft fundraising emails. Other AI systems help
candidates target particular donors [https://www.donoratlas.com] with personalized messages [https://www.newpaltz.edu/schoolofbusiness/hvventurehub/newsletter/article/august-2024/daisychains-innovation-in-campaign-organizing/].
It’s notoriously difficult to measure the impact of these kinds of tools,
and political consultants are cagey about what really works, but there’s clearly interest in continuing to use these technologies in campaign fundraising.

Polling has been highly mathematical for decades, and pollsters are
constantly incorporating new technologies into their processes. Techniques range from using AI to distill voter sentiment from social networking
platforms -- something known as “social listening [https://doi.org/10.1080/10904018.2017.1330656]“ -- to creating synthetic voters [https://doi.org/10.1162/99608f92.1d3cf75d] that can answer tens of thousands of questions. Whether these AI applications will result in more accurate polls and strategic insights for campaigns remains to be seen, but there is [https://doi.org/10.1162/99608f92.1d3cf75d] promising [https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2411.10109] research [https://hal.science/hal-04688498/document] motivated by the
ever-increasing challenge of reaching real humans with surveys.

On the political organizing side, AI assistants are being used for such
diverse purposes as helping craft political messages and strategy [https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/how-ai-is-transforming-the-way-political-campaigns-work/],
generating ads [https://www.wired.com/story/battelgroundai-ai-progressive-political-ads/], drafting speeches [https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2024/06/14/trump-says-he-had-a-speech-rewritten-by-ai-and-decided-im-going-to-use-this/]
and helping coordinate canvassing [https://www.robeisenbach.com/cases/comm-voice] and get-out-the-vote
efforts. In Argentina in 2023, both major presidential candidates used AI [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/15/world/americas/argentina-election-ai-milei-massa.html]
to develop campaign posters, videos and other materials.

In 2024, similar capabilities were almost certainly used in a variety of elections around the world. In the U.S., for example, a Georgia politician
used AI [https://www.gpb.org/news/2024/04/25/georgia-political-campaigns-start-deploy-ai-humans-still-needed-press-the-flesh]
to produce blog posts, campaign images and podcasts. Even standard
productivity software suites like those from Adobe, Microsoft and Google
now integrate AI features that are unavoidable -- and perhaps very useful
to campaigns. Other AI systems help advise candidates [https://campaignsandelections.com/campaigntech/ai-is-helping-candidates-decide-on-runs-for-higher-office/]
looking to run for higher office.

* FAKES AND COUNTERFAKES

And there was AI-created misinformation and propaganda, even though it was
not as catastrophic as feared. Days before a Slovakian election in 2023,
fake audio [https://ipi.media/slovakia-deepfake-audio-of-dennik-n-journalist-offers-worrying-example-of-ai-abuse/]
discussing election manipulation went viral. This kind of thing happened
many times in 2024, but it’s unclear if any of it had any real effect.

In the U.S. presidential election, there was a lot of press after a
robocall of a fake Joe Biden voice [https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/fake-joe-biden-robocall-tells-new-hampshire-democrats-not-vote-tuesday-rcna134984]
told New Hampshire voters not to vote in the Democratic primary, but that didn’t appear to make much of a difference in that vote. Similarly, AI-generated images from hurricane disaster areas didn’t seem to have much effect, and neither did a stream of AI-faked celebrity endorsements [https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/22/media/fake-celebrity-endorsements-social-media-2024-election-misinformation/index.html]
or viral deepfake images and videos [https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intellgence-memes-trump-harris-deepfakes-256282c31fa9316c4059f09036c70fa9/]
misrepresenting candidates’ actions and seemingly designed to prey on their political weaknesses.

AI also played a role in protecting the information ecosystem. OpenAI used
its own AI models to disrupt an Iranian foreign influence operation [https://www.npr.org/2024/08/17/nx-s1-5079397/openai-chatgpt-iranian-group-us-election]
aimed at sowing division before the U.S. presidential election. While
anyone can use AI tools today to generate convincing fake audio, images and text, and that capability is here to stay, tech platforms also use AI to automatically moderate content [https://rebootdemocracy.ai/blog/Ai-Powered-Content-Moderation] like hate speech and extremism. This is a positive use case, making content
moderation more efficient and sparing humans from having to review the
worst offenses, but there’s room for it to become more effective, more transparent and more equitable.

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* Origin: High Portable Tosser at my node (21:1/229.1)