AI, Politics, and the Post-Truth Era
Lilac Carr, BA Politics and International Relations
On September 29th, the President of the United States posted a video to X (and the inappropriately named Truth Social) of Democratic House Leader Chuck Schumer standing next to Democratic Senate Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who donned a sombrero and a moustache as stereotypical Jarabe Tapaio music played. In the video, Chuck Schumer made a surprising confession that nobody likes or votes for Democrats anymore because of their ‘woke trans bulls—’, ‘not even Black people wanna vote for us anymore,’ he elaborated. His plan? To give ‘all these illegal aliens free healthcare’ in an effort to convince them to vote for the Democrats. This video, of course, is not real, though it did receive over 36 million views and 465 thousand likes.
This type of political content is everywhere nowadays - from AI Democrats declaring they will give ‘illegal aliens’ healthcare, to AI videos of Iranians proclaiming their love for Israel. From this perspective, it appears as if many politicians have deemed the truth to be a hindrance.
However, as politicians know, you do not need AI to lie. Donald Trump, a fervent user of AI, did not need AI during the 2024 election to declare that Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs. Nor did white supremacist agitators in the UK need AI to convince racists that the Southport attacker was Muslim. Likewise, many AI-generated photos and videos are (at least to most people) obviously fake.
What, then, is the point of political agitators using AI in the first place? If AI does anything, it is that it provides an emotionally and visually compelling complement to the telling of a story directed at people who already want to or are emotionally and politically disposed to believe it. AI-generated videos of Democrats proclaiming that immigrants are part of an evil liberal plot to undemocratically take over the government provide the visual catalyst for a feeling that some Americans already have - and importantly, want to have confirmed, regardless of the actual truth: that immigrants and the social inclusion of ‘woke’ minorities in everyday American life is a malicious invasion and attack. Americans who positively respond to this AI content already experience the existence of minorities in ‘their’ country as an attack. For these people, AI provides a comforting and reassuring source of immersion into an illusion they already experience as real. Ironically, though not coincidentally, this runs exactly counter to infamous right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro’s catchphrase, ‘facts don’t care about your feelings.’ AI political content, for its audiences, serves to create the visual ‘facts’ that best align with its audiences’ feelings when the facts of the real world collide with them.
If it is true that we live in a post-truth era, then, as many academics and political commentators have claimed, it is not because of AI. Rather, AI is a technology that exacerbates and reflects the worst aspects of our already existing political culture - serving to create the twisted, fantastical world that many politicians and people have and are already insistent on living in.
