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Harris will use human Donald Trump stand-ins, not AI, for debate prep

Aug 27, 2024, 6:16am EDT
politics
Go Nakamura/Reuters
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The News

The Harris-Walz campaign will not use an AI-generated Donald Trump as a stand-in for the former president during debate prep, a spokesperson told Semafor.

Why did we ask? Sheera Frenkel of the New York Times reported on the Hard Fork podcast that an undisclosed tech company pitched the Biden campaign on creating an AI-generated version of Donald Trump as a sparring partner. It never happened, but that was Biden. Now there’s a new, younger candidate from the Bay Area who promised to make sure “we lead the world into the future on space and artificial intelligence” in her convention speech. We thought it was worth checking in.

The Harris campaign did not respond directly to a question of whether or not they received the same offer to build an AI Trump, but they did make clear they aren’t using one now.

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“Currently, the only authorized campaign use of generative AI is productivity tools, such as data analysis and industry-standard coding assistants,” Harris-Walz spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg said in a statement to Semafor.

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Kadia’s view

There’s reason to think AI-generated coaching might benefit campaigns in a case like this — after all there’s few people on the planet who can offer more publicly available input to create a realistic model than Trump.

But even if campaigns haven’t resorted to using AI in this capacity yet, the broader technology has still been widely used throughout this election cycle.

  • Trump’s Super PAC, MAGA Inc., launched a website with AI tools to help generate scripts to help content creators.
  • Earlier this summer, Rep. Jennifer Wexton, D-Va., whose speech is impaired because of a rare neurological disorder, used an AI creation of her voice to give a speech on the House floor.
  • There’s also been plenty of deep fakes. Recently, Trump posted “I accept” on Truth Social to a montage of partly AI-generated photos of Taylor Swift fans who wore digitally altered “Swifties for Trump” t-shirts. Swift did not endorse Trump and the images were produced by a Texas-based non-profit organization named John Milton Freedom Foundation.
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Notable

  • Humans are still skeptical of AI-generated campaign calls, The New York Times reports, which has slowed their usage this election cycle despite a leap in commercially available technology since 2020.
  • A political consultant faces charges in New Hampshire after using AI to mimic Joe Biden’s voice. The calls told voters to skip the state’s primary and “save” their votes for November.

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