South Carolina Lt.Gov.
Pamela Evette appears distressed in a gloomy room as she undergoes a polygraph test that ends with the lie detector catching fire.Although the video clarifies that the “dramatizations” in this political ad are generated with artificial intelligence, some voters still asked her whether what they saw was real, Evette told Noticias Telemundo.
At first, Evette said she thought, “This is ridiculous, right? Like, nobody could possibly believe this?” Later, as she traveled the state during her campaign to become the Republican gubernatorial nominee — a race she lost in June to Attorney General Alan Wilson — she said she encountered voters who were confused about the video’s veracity.“On the campaign trail, I would have people ask me, like, ‘Oh my gosh, did they really make you take a lie-detector test?’” Evette said.She then had to explain to them that it never happened and it was an AI-generated fake ad.
“So you almost think it’s a joke and you kind of laugh at it, until you realize that there is a group of people out there that can’t tell the difference,” she said, “and then start to question if what they’re saying may be true.”Evette is not the only one whose image was manipulated in the lead-up to the midterm elections.The Wesleyan Media Project, a group of experts that tracks political propaganda in campaigns, identified at least 220 ads produced or enhanced with artificial intelligence by candidates or political action committees this election cycle.
They cost just under $137 million.It’s a significant leap in the use of this technology compared to 2024, when the investment in AI was less than $50,000 during the presidential election.As of May of this year, the money spent on these AI ads was already $20 million.“We really saw the growth in AI ads over the summer,” Travis Ridout, a professor at Washington State University and one of the project directors, told Noticias Telemundo.
“A lot of them w...