In a crowded campaign office in Seoul, young, trendy staffers are using deepfake technology to try to achieve the near-impossible: make a middle-aged, establishment South Korean presidential candidate cool.
Armed with hours of specially recorded footage of opposition People Power Party candidate Yoon Suk-yeol, the team has created a digital avatar of the frontrunner — and set “AI [artificial intelligence] Yoon” loose on the campaign trail ahead of a March 9 election.
From a deepfake video of Barack Obama insulting Donald Trump to failed New York mayoral candidate Andrew Yang campaigning in the metaverse, AI technology has been used in elections before.
Photo: AFP
However, AI Yoon’s creators believe that he is the world’s first official deepfake candidate — a concept gaining traction in South Korea, which has the world’s fastest average Internet speeds.
With neatly combed black hair and a smart suit, the avatar looks near-identical to the real South Korean candidate, but uses salty language and meme-ready quips in a bid to engage younger voters who get their news online.
It has been a huge hit. AI Yoon has attracted millions of views since making his debut on Jan. 1. Tens of thousands of people have asked questions, but it is not the usual policy-related fare.
“President Moon Jae-in and [rival presidential candidate] Lee Jae-myung are drowning. Who do you save?” one user asks AI Yoon.
“I’d wish them both good luck,” the avatar snaps back.
At first glance, AI Yoon could pass for an actual candidate — an apt demonstration of how far artificially generated videos, known as “deepfakes,” have come in the last few years.
The real Yoon recorded more than 3,000 sentences — 20 hours of audio and video — to provide enough data for a local deepfake technology company to create the avatar.
“Words that are often spoken by Yoon are better reflected in AI Yoon,” AI Yoon team director Baik Kyeong-hoon said.
What the avatar says is written by his campaign team, not by the candidate himself.
“We try to come up with humorous and satirical answers,” Baik said.
The approach has paid off. AI Yoon’s pronouncements have made headlines in South Korean media, and 7 million people have visited the “Wiki Yoon” Web site to question the avatar.
The snark is working: While polling for the March 9 election remains neck-and-neck, Yoon has pulled ahead of rival Lee Jae-myung with voters in their 20s.
Baik thinks AI is the future of election campaigns.
“It’s so easy to create huge amounts of content with deepfake technology,” he said. “It is inevitable that this will be used more and more.”
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