Canadian political party makes video of AI bot endorsing them, immediately regrets it

A Canadian political party created — and swiftly deleted — an endorsement video generated by artificial intelligence. “We tried something new, and it turned out to be bad,” the Alberta Party said in a tweet Tuesday.

The video shows an AI-generated man speaking in support of the Alberta Party, a centrist party in the province of Alberta. It holds zero of the 87 seats in the province’s legislature, after getting 9% of the popular vote in the 2021 elections.

“Does Alberta need a third political party? It depends on whether or not you’re happy with your current choices,” the AI bot says, before lauding the Alberta Party and asking viewers to make a donation.

The party reportedly didn’t disclose on Instagram that the video was AI-generated, but commenters on Instagram pointed out that something seemed off about the clip.

Screenshots show the party replied to comments by saying the person in the video was AI-generated, but the words were written by a real person. The party said it hoped to spark a conversation about AI’s role in society.

After deleting the video, Alberta Party said on Twitter that they removed the post but “not because we were trying to hide anything.” They said they wanted to better their mistake and decided to reshoot the video “with real party members.”

The account then reposted the deleted video of “our slightly stilted AI friend.”

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