Three Armed and Dangerous

Political campaigns have never been shy about using false information to fool prospective supporters. But now AI is coming into the mix. Deepfakes and fake news will be dangerous. But AI generated images are already in use. Thankfully, some campaigns are so terrible at making and deploying these images that we can get a glimpse of what’s coming—along with a few nervous laughs. In Toronto, an Anti-Homeless Mayoral Candidate Uses AI to Create Fake Images of Blight. He created fake images of a lot of other stuff, too. But you don’t have to be an expert in computer generated content to identify the clues. “That Furey’s campaign likely used a prompt-based image generator to illustrate its campaign literature is not in itself shocking; candidates across the world have embraced this dubious approach in the past year, fueling criticisms that AI is being used to spread misinformation and generally warp people’s perception of reality. What is startling about the images in Furey’s platform is that they contain mistakes so egregious and easy to spot that it makes one wonder how no one caught the issues, or if, alternatively, Furey believes the typical Toronto resident does in fact have three arms.”