2024 is a year of elections around the world. Starting with Taiwan, there are various elections lined up, including the Indonesian presidential election (February 14), the Korean National Assembly election, and the US presidential election. Recently, there have been voices calling for the regulation of bias in election information through generative artificial intelligence or search results expansion through artificial intelligence, and I would like to inform you of an interesting case of artificial intelligence utilization.
Indonesia's election story
Ahead of Indonesia’s February 14 presidential election, generative artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing large-scale political campaigns. Prabowo Subianto ’s AI-generated avatars, whether making a Korean-style finger heart or holding a beloved cat, are winning over young voters.
The Great Indonesian Movement Party (Partai Gerakan Indonesia Raya), to which Prabowo Subianto belongs, is a party with a strong image of being a hard-line conservative party that opposes policies on sexual minorities and citizens' democratization movements. In particular, it ran as a presidential candidate in the last presidential election, but lost to Joko Widodo of the progressive Democratic Resistance Party (Partai Demokrasi Indonesia Perjuangan ) . To summarize the election at the time, Prabowo Subianto was a former warlord who actually suppressed the democracy movement with force, while Joko Widodo was a civilian who had been involved in the movement for a civilian government. Can you imagine the atmosphere? (According to the final vote count, Joko Widodo got 55.5%, Prabowo Subianto got 44.5%)
However, after Joko Widodo took office as president, he appointed Prabowo Subianto as the Minister of Defense. The reason was national unity. Subianto has been doing well as the Minister of Defense so far, but this time he is running for president again. Since Indonesia has a three-term limit, Joko Widodo has already been president twice, so the Democratic Struggle Party nominated a different candidate. And Joko Widodo and the current leader of the Democratic Struggle Party are not on good terms. They have fought each other several times, and it has been reported in international news... (Ruling party vs. president structure... Huh?)
Here, Joko Widodo is doing a great job of feeding the Democratic Resistance Party's leader by nominating his eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, as Prabowo Subianto's vice president. (Indonesia runs its elections similar to the US, with both the presidential and vice presidential candidates running.) Yes, the one on the left of the billboard above is Prabowo, and the one on the right is Gibran. As always, stories about fights in other people's houses are the most interesting.
From an old-fashioned image to a cute image through an avatar created by AI
In any case, the use of generative AI in Indonesia’s election campaign is unprecedented, with AI tools being used in a variety of areas, including creating campaign art, analyzing social media sentiment, building interactive chatbots, and targeting voters.
In particular, the Prabowo campaign is at the center of an image-making strategy through AI, putting forward a new image of 'gemoy' (cute and lovable) instead of the fiery nationalist image shown in the previous two presidential elections.
Having already lost to Joko Widodo twice in elections, Prabowo had to change his image as a conservative, nationalist, and military man. Since he couldn’t change the truth, he decided to go with a cute concept. The character created with the above-mentioned generative image is enjoying greater popularity than expected. In fact, according to recent polls, he is winning by a landslide outside the margin of error.
Please note that the approval rating increased further after 45.4% vs 27.4%. If it exceeds 50%, there is no runoff election.
Barring any major changes, this election is very likely to be a third run by Prabowo, who is running against the current president's son Gibran as his vice president. It is so unusual that it could end in the first round.
This change is likely to revolutionize how election campaigns are conducted, not just in Indonesia but around the world. Campaigns using generative AI technology can provide low-cost, customized campaign tools, and in particular, make customized campaign tools that were previously limited to major candidates accessible to legislative candidates.
However, the use of generative AI in political campaigns is raising many controversies in terms of regulation and ethics. Although AI technology providers prohibit the use of AI for political campaigns, cases that go beyond these guidelines have been found in Indonesian election campaigns. This suggests the need for regulations and policies on the political use of AI technology not only in Indonesia but also around the world. Personally, I think that tuning AI to a specific ideology and then spreading it can be somewhat problematic, but it is a bit ambiguous to talk about the results. (It is difficult to catch in the first place)
What about South Korea?
What about South Korea? The aides might not like it (I can hear the sound of more work to do), but the National Election Commission has approved the use of generative AI based on existing results. However, they say that they will severely punish false promises or maliciously made deepfake videos.
I am looking forward to seeing what kind of diverse content will emerge in this general election.
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