Nuisance no more: Korean political parties embrace AI ahead of local elections

This article is by Chang Yoon-seo and read by an artificial voice. AI, once treated as a nuisance during elections because of deepfakes, is taking on a different role ahead of the June 3 local races as campaigns embrace the technology, deploying it for everything from nomination screening and campaign routes to content production. Political parties are rolling out local election strategies using AI, according to political sources on Monday. The Reform Party even developed its own app, called AI Campaign Manager, which analyzes floating population data by region to suggest GPS-based campaign routes. It even includes a chatbot that answers questions about election law. "Hiring one campaign manager costs millions of won, and consulting costs tens of millions of won, leaving only people with money or connections in politics," Reform Party leader Lee Jun-seok said in March, explaining why the app was developed. The party also introduced an AI YouTube Shorts production program last month. The program automatically completes subtitles and edits the moment a candidate speaks at a campaign site, allowing the person to create video content on the spot without a separate filming team. Campaign manager, promoter and even brains AI is moving beyond a promotional tool and becoming part of the election management infrastructure. The technology is being adopted across party lines, from pledge analysis and candidate vetting to policy proposal organization. The ruling Democratic Party (DP) introduced an AI tool on its local election website that helps voters learn about candidates and propose policies to them. When voters submit policy ideas, AI organizes them into summaries, key points and expected effects, then delivers them to candidates. Voters can also check candidates' profiles, summaries of their pledges and even AI-predicted MBTI personality types and leadership styles. MBTI refers to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator personality test. "Starting with these local elections, we plan to fully introduce AI into election-related work going forward," a DP official said. The opposition People Power Party (PPP) earlier used an AI-based political credit evaluation model during its nomination process. AI quantifies and compares applicants' contributions to the party, public activities in their regions and ethical standards, while optical character recognition (OCR) technology automatically identifies key items in submitted documents and cross-checks them against application forms. OCR technology converts documents or text images into machine-readable digital texts. "The system minimized errors that can occur under the previous manual verification-centered approach, while improving both the speed and accuracy of administrative processing," the PPP said. AI in global politics AI is also being actively used in elections overseas. In Japan's House of Representatives election last month, Team Mirai, a political party founded by AI engineer Takahiro Anno, which campaigned under the slogan "political decision-making using AI," won 11 seats — a significant achievement for a party just nine months old. "We need to increase Nagatacho's processing speed tenfold," said the party leader Anno, referring to the Tokyo neighborhood where Japan's legislature is located. There is even a case where AI has become an actual politician. In Albania, the world's first AI minister was appointed in September last year. The AI, named Diella, meaning sun in Albanian, was tasked with making decisions on government public tenders without human intervention. "Diella is a virtually created Cabinet member," Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said. "It will help prevent corruption in public tenders and improve government transparency." Though AI has emerged as a potential solution to lowering barriers to entry in election campaigns, concerns over side effects remain. Methods of manipulating public opinion using AI, including deepfakes, are becoming increasingly sophisticated d...