The SEC Newgate AI Weekly

With election week here, it’s time for an AI Weekly election special, focusing on Britain’s first AI candidate, an AI generated faux pas on Canada Day and how AI could be used to help a struggling Biden.

Britain’s first AI politician

Yes, you read that right. AI Steve is running to be the UK’s first AI politician.

Well, not exactly. AI Steve is the brainchild of Steve Endacott, a real human who will be on the ballot paper and would be the person elected to Parliament.

But as the chairman of Neural Voice, a company that creates AI avatars, Steve claims his AI avatar will his AI co-pilot who will control him.

On AI Steve’s website you can ask the avatar about his policies, and even suggest new ones, if he doesn’t have any in that area already: https://www.ai-steve.co.uk/#

AI Steve’s aim is restore trust in politics. But will the public trust artificial intelligence to represent them in Parliament? With trust in politicians at record low levels, they might just trust them more than a fellow human.

Canadian Embassy removes AI post

Canada’s Embassy in Washington had to remove a social media post celebrating Canada Day after it discovered the post was generate by AI.

The brightly lit image featured a large crowd celebrating in a city, with many Canadian flags being waved. The problem is, the event never happened.

The image was apparently bought from a stock image service, with the seller having created the image using AI.

The Canadian government has set aside $2.4 billion to support AI development in the next five years. But when it comes to celebrating Canada Day, it seems they need the real thing.

Could AI Biden defeat Trump?

In the last week, global headlines have been dominated by US President Joe Biden’s stuttering and incoherent debate performance against his Republican rival Donald Trump.

There have been multiple calls for the President to stand aside for a younger candidate.

But what if Biden could appear ten years younger using AI?

That’s what’s being proposed by Kaivan Shroff, in Huffpost, who believes that AI augmented videos could create a younger version of Biden. This, he argues, would allow voters to focus on the substance of what he is saying, rather than the optics of being an undeniably elderly candidate.

It’s an interesting possibility and Biden wouldn’t be the first to do it. The jailed former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, for example, has used AI to circumvent his imprisonment. Through AI video avatars he manages to continue to communicate with the Pakistani population. This could well be an option Donald Trump needs to explore, if his many legal battles go against him.

That’s not to say that the Republicans aren’t already using AI. Over a year ago they released a fully AI generated attack video, with dark AI imagery that imagined what a Biden victory would mean.

None of this, however, helps with Biden’s debate performances, as he can’t simply send an AI avatar to debate for him. On September 10th, the date of the second presidential debate, he’s still going to have to take on Trump the old fashioned way.