This isn’t a US politics thing, it is happening everywhere. Politics has been extremely negative and hyper-focused on character assassinations since the rise of social media - generative AI is just the latest weapon being used in this new battleground. Even if there are party rules or laws introduced to prevent official campaigns and offices from doing this, it will still continue to spread via the public. We are now living in an age where anyone can do this stuff pretty quickly and easily and that will only accelerate as the technology improves.

EDIT: Some examples of generative AI being used in major elections this year:

• France
• India
• Indonesia

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Are we going down the same path as US politics?

It depends what you mean, that’s a vague and broad question. Societies are complex and there are obvious similarities and differences between our two systems, our two cultures and our two main parties.

For similarities, we both have ‘liberal democracies’, which positions our system as ultimately a popularity contest. So unfortunately, techniques used in other countries will be sold or copied over here. We saw this with different elections (US election, UK Brexit) all being involved in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. If it works and they aren’t going to get caught, we’ll copy it.

Another similarity is the heavy integration of capital in politics. You know, ‘lobbying’, media corporation backing, and all that. The US are further down that track, but it’s just an inevitable consequence of capitalism - power tends towards groups with the most money. So politicians who please capitalists get exponentially more resources to dominate the mass media. This famous analysis of US mass media translates very well over to Australian mass media and politics.

As for differences, we overall seem to expect dignity and professionalism from politicians. For one example, we appear far less prone to electing celebrities. An exception that springs to mind is Peter Garrett, but even then they were famous for very political band, it’s a different ballpark to Reagan, Schwarzenegger or Trump. While they’re not the same, it is worth noting that Clive ‘Discount Trump’ Palmer didn’t go far, even with massive campaign spending on advertisements.

As a final mention, we don’t use a FPTP electoral system, so there isn’t quite the same dominant federal two-party system of the USA. There are the dominant parties/coalitions, but Greens or Teals have shown themselves as able to seriously threaten Labor and Liberal parties for seats. So we don’t get stuck between picking ‘the lesser evil’ like most of the US are pragmatically forced to. Some people in Australia praise compulsory voting, but I see preferential voting as far more important. Always improvements, but that alone puts our system at the forefront of ‘liberal democracy’ systems

There are currently no rules at either the state or federal level to stop political parties and candidates from using AI-generated material in election campaigns.

Why should there be? They already use video editing. The issue should be making misleading content, not which tool was used to make it. Mandate labeling it clearly to say it’s not real footage.

Also I really hate TikTok.

That’s how I feel about almost every social media platform. I even complain about Lemmy occasionally!

It does seem like whatever integrity there was in politics is quickly vanishing. I’m relieved we don’t have quite the same attitude towards religion compared to the US at least. I think Australia is a long way off being a theocracy, whereas the US could be one as soon as next year.

Election cycles are seasonal events and there is a traveling circus that supports them across the English speaking countries. There is also trans-national movement within political influence businesses like News Corp and other lobby groups.

Historically Australia has often adapted media from elsewhere whether it be advertising or television formats and much of the country was so isolated pre-Internet that we never noticed that football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars was a ripoff of hot dogs, apple pie and chevrolet.

I expect over negative/false/deceptive campaigning would be regulated as we have a comparatively robust and fair electoral system. AI is built into popular image editing tools and political staffers aren’t necessarily great graphic artists so I expect we will see more low effort AI images in political advertising and everywhere else as society continues to embrace mediocrity and deskilling.