\n<\/p>\n
The posters<\/a> dotting the streets of Buenos Aires had a certain Soviet flair to them.<\/p>\n There was one of Argentina\u2019s presidential candidates, Sergio Massa, dressed in a shirt with what appeared to be military medals, pointing to a blue sky. He was surrounded by hundreds of older people \u2014 in drab clothing, with serious, and often disfigured, faces \u2014 looked toward him in hope.<\/p>\n The style was no mistake. The illustrator had been given clear instructions.<\/p>\n \u201cSovietic Political propaganda poster illustration by Gustav Klutsis featuring a leader, masssa, standing firmly,\u201d said a prompt that Mr. Massa\u2019s campaign fed into an artificial-intelligence program to produce the image. \u201cSymbols of unity and power fill the environment,\u201d the prompt continued. \u201cThe image exudes authority and determination.\u201d<\/p>\n Javier Milei, the other candidate in Sunday\u2019s runoff election, has struck back by sharing what appear to be A.I. images depicting Mr. Massa as a Chinese communist leader<\/a> and himself as a cuddly cartoon lion<\/a>. They have been viewed more than 30 million times.<\/p>\n Argentina\u2019s election has quickly become a testing ground for A.I. in campaigns, with the two candidates and their supporters employing the technology to doctor existing images and videos and create others from scratch.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A.I. has made candidates say things they did not, and put them in famous movies and memes. It has created campaign posters, and triggered debates over whether real videos are actually real<\/a>.<\/p>\n A.I.\u2019s prominent role in Argentina\u2019s campaign and the political debate it has set off underscore the technology\u2019s growing prevalence and show that, with its expanding power and falling cost, it is now likely to be a factor in many democratic elections<\/a> around the globe.<\/p>\n Experts compare the moment to the early days of social media, a technology offering tantalizing new tools<\/a> for politics \u2014 and unforeseen threats.<\/p>\n Mr. Massa\u2019s campaign has created an A.I. system that can create images and videos of many of the election\u2019s main players \u2014 the candidates, running mates, political allies \u2014 doing a wide variety of things. <\/p>\n The campaign has used A.I. to portray Mr. Massa, Argentina\u2019s staid center-left economy minister, as strong, fearless and charismatic, including videos that show him as a soldier in war<\/a>, a Ghostbuster<\/a> and Indiana Jones<\/a>, as well as posters that evoke Barack Obama\u2019s 2008 \u201cHope\u201d poster<\/a> and a cover of The New Yorker<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The campaign has also used the system to depict his opponent, Mr. Milei \u2014 a far-right libertarian economist and television personality known for outbursts \u2014 as unstable, putting him in films like \u201cClockwork Orange<\/a>\u201d and \u201cFear and Loathing in Las Vegas<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Much of the content has been clearly fake. But a few creations have toed the line of disinformation. The Massa campaign produced one \u201cdeepfake\u201d video in which Mr. Milei explains how a market for human organs would work<\/a>, something he has said philosophically fits in with his libertarian views.<\/p>\n \u201cImagine having kids and thinking that each is a long-term investment. Not in the traditional sense, but thinking of the economic potential of their organs,\u201d says the manipulated image of Mr. Milei in the fabricated video<\/a>, posted by the Massa campaign on its Instagram account for A.I. content, called \u201cA.I. for the Homeland.\u201d<\/p>\n The post\u2019s caption says, \u201cWe asked an Artificial Intelligence to help Javier explain the business of selling organs and this happened.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In an interview, Mr. Massa said he was shocked the first time he saw what A.I. could do. \u201cI didn\u2019t have my mind prepared for the world that I\u2019m going to live in,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a huge challenge. We\u2019re on a horse that we have to ride but we still don\u2019t know its tricks.\u201d<\/p>\n The New York Times then showed him the deepfake his campaign created of Mr. Milei and human organs. He appeared disturbed. \u201cI don\u2019t agree with that use,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n His spokesman later stressed that the post was in jest and clearly labeled A.I.-generated. His campaign said in a statement that its use of A.I. is to entertain and make political points, not deceive.<\/p>\n Researchers have long worried about the impact of A.I. on elections. The technology can deceive and confuse voters, casting doubt over what is real, adding to the disinformation that can be spread by social networks.<\/p>\n For years, those fears had largely been speculative because the technology to produce such fakes was too complicated, expensive and unsophisticated.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cNow we\u2019ve seen this absolute explosion of incredibly accessible and increasingly powerful democratized tool sets, and that calculation has radically changed,\u201d said Henry Ajder, an expert based in England who has advised governments on A.I.-generated content.<\/p>\n This year, a mayoral candidate in Toronto used gloomy A.I.-generated images of homeless people to telegraph what Toronto would turn into if he weren\u2019t elected. In the United States, the Republican Party posted a video created with A.I. that shows China invading Taiwan and other dystopian scenes to depict what it says would happen if President Biden wins a second term.<\/p>\n And the campaign of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida shared a video showing A.I.-generated images of Donald J. Trump hugging Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, who has become an enemy on the American right for his role leading the nation\u2019s pandemic response.<\/p>\n So far, the A.I.-generated content shared by the campaigns in Argentina has either been labeled A.I. generated or is so clearly fabricated that it is unlikely it would deceive even the most credulous voters. Instead, the technology has supercharged the ability to create viral content that previously would have taken teams of graphic designers days or weeks to complete.<\/p>\n Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, said this week<\/a> that it would require political ads to disclose whether they used A.I. Other unpaid posts on the sites that use A.I., even if related to politics, would not be required to carry any disclosures. The U.S. Federal Election Commission is also considering<\/a> whether to regulate the use of A.I. in political ads.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based research group that studies internet platforms, signed a letter urging such regulations. Isabelle Frances-Wright, the group\u2019s head of technology and society, said the extensive use of A.I. in Argentina\u2019s election was worrisome.<\/p>\n \u201cI absolutely think it\u2019s a slippery slope,\u201d she said. \u201cIn a year from now, what already seems very realistic will only seem more so.\u201d <\/p>\n The Massa campaign said it decided to use A.I. in an effort to show that Peronism, the 78-year-old political movement behind Mr. Massa, can appeal to young voters by mixing Mr. Massa\u2019s image with pop and meme culture.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n To do so, campaign engineers and artists fed photos of Argentina\u2019s various political players into an open-source software called Stable Diffusion to train their own A.I. system so that it could create fake images of those real people. They can now quickly produce an image or video of more than a dozen top political players in Argentina doing almost anything they ask.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n During the campaign, Mr. Massa\u2019s communications team has briefed artists working with the campaign\u2019s A.I. on which messages or emotions they want the images to impart, such as national unity, family values and fear. The artists have then brainstormed ideas to put Mr. Massa or Mr. Milei, as well as other political figures, into content that references films, memes, artistic styles or moments in history.<\/p>\n For Halloween, the Massa campaign told its A.I. to create a series of cartoonish images of Mr. Milei and his allies as zombies<\/a>. The campaign also used A.I. to create a dramatic movie trailer<\/a>, featuring Buenos Aires, Argentina\u2019s capital, burning, Mr. Milei as an evil villain in a straitjacket and Mr. Massa as the hero who will save the country.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The A.I. images have also shown up in the real world. The Soviet posters were one of the dozens of designs that Mr. Massa\u2019s campaign and supporters printed to post across Argentina\u2019s public spaces.<\/p>\n Some images were generated by the campaign\u2019s A.I., while others were created by supporters using A.I., including one of the most well-known, an image of Mr. Massa riding a horse in the style of Jos\u00e9 de San Mart\u00edn, an Argentine independence hero. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cMassa was too stiff,\u201d said Octavio Tome, a community organizer who helped create the image. \u201cWe\u2019re showing a boss-like Massa, and he\u2019s very Argentine.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The rise of A.I. in Argentina\u2019s election has also made some voters question what is real. After a video circulated last week of Mr. Massa looking exhausted after a campaign event, his critics accused him of being on drugs. His supporters quickly struck back, claiming the video was actually a deepfake.<\/p>\n His campaign confirmed, however, that the video was, in fact, real, but said that Mr. Massa was not on drugs.<\/p>\n Mr. Massa said people were already using A.I. to try to cover up past mistakes or scandals. \u201cIt\u2019s very easy to hide behind artificial intelligence when something you said come out, and you didn\u2019t want them to,\u201d Mr. Massa said in the interview.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Earlier in the race, Patricia Bullrich, a candidate who failed to qualify for the runoff, tried to explain away leaked audio recordings of her economic adviser offering a woman a job in exchange for sex by saying the recordings were fabricated. \u201cThey can fake voices, alter videos,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Were the recordings real or fake? It\u2019s unclear.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n