The AI generation of fear-based messages is finding an audience in this year's election campaign, a University of Canterbury professor of digital marketing says.
AI-generated material has become a new factor in campaigning with different political parties, and even the Electoral Commission has used using the tool to create ads and information.
University of Canterbury professor Ekant Veer told Morning Report the fast and affordable messages were having a mixed effect. They were working for a "target audience" who were worried about what the future held, but others were pushing it away.
He said a Taxpayers Union ad using AI-generated footage of Labour leader Chris Hipkins stealing wallets was an example of the tool's power to entrench existing values and beliefs.
"Disclosure of AI doesn't actually make a huge difference. If people already think that Hipkins is going to take more money away from them, something like this is just going to exacerbate that. If someone doesn't feel that, then it's just going to push them away," Veer said.
He said people under 30 were more likely to reject AI-generated images as inauthentic but older viewers were more susceptible to accepting the content at face value.
"When you start creating images that never exist that's when authenticity goes out the window.
"People my age and older we grew up learning that seeing is believing and there's not that critical level of discernment, which young people definitely have, and they're the ones who are saying 'this is slop, we don't want to see it'," Veer said.
Veer said the technology was a cost-effective, cheap and easy way to generate messages but the effectiveness was being determined by the audience being targeted.
"If you see a social media platform that is typically filled with people who are 30 plus, so Facebook for example, you'll see a lot more AI that is going uncontested.
"Then you go onto Instagram which is a very creative, visual-based medium and typically people are 25 and under. If there's AI slop on there it's usually the audience that will say straight away 'we don't want to see this'. Even if they agree with the message, they don't agree with the medium in which that message is conveyed," Veer said.
In a statement, the Electoral Commission said it had used AI to generate six social media images that were clearly labelled, and a small part of a larger campaign.
They were created following workshops with young people who wanted enrolment and voting information delivered in a fun way, the commission said.
