FILE: Baker Beach with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background in San Francisco. The Republican National Committee released a campaign ad Tuesday saying rising crime rates would force San Francisco to close under a second term for Joe Biden.
Takako Hatayama-Phillips/Getty Images
The Republican National Committee on Tuesday released a campaign ad that used artificial intelligence to generate images of a dystopian future should President Joe Biden be re-elected next year. San Francisco was mentioned in the ad.
The ad begins with a question: “What if the weakest president we’ve ever had was re-elected?” It then launches into a series of images — all generated by AI, an RNC spokesman told Axios — depicting fictional scenarios, each accompanied by a fake newscast. It is claimed that China would invade Taiwan, that financial markets would go into free fall after the closure of 500 regional banks, and that the country’s southern border would be overrun by a mob of “80,000 illegals”.
It also claims officials in San Francisco are “shutting down” the city over “escalating crime and the fentanyl crisis.” The AI imagery shown for this segment includes the Golden Gate Bridge, soldiers lining the city streets, and a man with multiple facial tattoos smoking a cigarette.
NEW: @Axios with a first look at RNC’s video response to Biden
It’s also the committee’s first video to be 100% generated by AI software to create images that look and feel real (in this case, an imaginary dystopian view of Biden’s future wins)… pic.twitter .com/S9qH0MXINc
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) April 25, 2023
To be honest, the ad is very strange – especially considering its forecast for San Francisco.
Discussions about crime have dominated local politics following the killing of Cash App founder Bob Lee and the bludgeoning of a city fire commissioner earlier this month, but recently released information on both incidents has challenged the initially dominant narrative. Last week, state Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that the California Highway Patrol and California National Guard would be assisting the San Francisco Police Department in fighting the city’s fentanyl crisis. But the notion that officials would actually “shut down” the city — it’s unclear what that really means — would be hard to imagine even in the worst of circumstances, especially considering cities in GOP-controlled states tend to have higher rates of violent crime .
The use of AI imagery in the ad says at least something about what political struggles might look like in the years to come. It’s the first of likely many political ads to be created using new technologies like AI image generators and voice bots.
The ad was released in response to this week’s announcement that Biden would be seeking a second term, a move that has been anticipated for months after Democrats made historic gains in last year’s midterm elections.
Alec Regimbal is a political reporter at SFGATE. He graduated from Western Washington University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. A Washington state native, Alec previously wrote for the Yakima Herald-Republic and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He also spent two years as a political adviser in the Washington State Legislature.
