Israeli Parties Embrace AI for Election Campaigns
Translated & summarized from Globes by baba
Israeli political parties are using AI for a wide array of campaign activities, from creating holiday greetings to producing viral videos. While deepfakes are a concern, most AI applications are editorial and hybrid, blending with authentic media.
The story in 5 lines · by baba
- Israeli parties are using AI for diverse election campaign purposes.
- AI applications range from simple edits to deepfakes and viral videos.
- Most AI uses are editorial and hybrid, blending with authentic content.
- A research project tracks AI use in political campaigns for transparency.
- Examples include Likud, Yishai, and Yair Golan's campaign videos.
Israeli political parties are increasingly utilizing artificial intelligence in their election campaigns, moving beyond simple manipulative tactics to a broader range of applications. A research initiative called "It's in AI" from the Open University is documenting these uses to promote transparency. While AI can be used for creating deepfakes and negative portrayals of opponents, the majority of its applications are more benign, including generating holiday greetings, visualizing data, creating event posters, animations, simple photo editing, summarizing meetings, and even composing songs.
Professor Anat Ben-David, who leads the "It's in AI" project, noted that the technology's use is complex. "The variety of uses we document shows a complex picture, where the same technology is used to create deepfake videos, but these are a very small part of the variety of uses for a variety of purposes," she stated. "Most uses are legitimate and editorial. Genres and sub-genres are also developing within them, and above all: most of the content is hybrid and combines AI within authentic media clips, which makes identification very difficult, and challenges the dichotomous perception that media can be only deepfake or only authentic."
Notable examples of AI-driven campaign content include a Likud party video celebrating two years since the elimination of Hezbollah leader. This video garnered hundreds of thousands of likes and shares.
The Yishai party released a video questioning who was flying in the sky, suggesting it was Benjamin Netanyahu en route to the Emirates to beg the president not to expose him. This video was released shortly before an incident involving a Flydubai flight.
Yair Golan, chairman of the Democrats, responded to the Dubai flight incident with a TikTok video showing Transportation Minister Miri Regev and Shin Bet head seemingly enjoying themselves at the beach, singing "You know I'm all you need." This was interpreted as a critique of perceived detachment during a security lapse.
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