Pritzker stays traditional
Shallow declined to say how Pritzker’s campaign would respond if Bailey posted more realistic looking false portrayals of the governor or used Pritzker’s voice to say something he never actually said.
Pritzker’s campaign plans to stick with more traditional methods, such as “by using real Illinoisians telling real stories about how the governor has improved their lives,” Shallow said.
“We think it’s more compelling than any AI slop that Darren Bailey’s going to come up with,” he said. “We don’t need to manufacture anything. Darren Bailey, anytime he steps in front of a camera, he does our work for us. We just have to record it.”
Shallow said he’s not worried that Bailey’s AI will have any effect on voters since it’s only being posted on social media and is generally only seen by Bailey and Del Mar’s followers.
Support for regulations
Pritzker told reporters in Decatur in June that he’s not a fan of AI political content and supports regulations on it.
“It’s deteriorating the political environment, if you ask me,” Pritzker said. “So I think that, at a minimum, we should be watermarking any ad, whether it’s online or on television, and it should say this is produced by AI, or something like that, so people know this isn’t real.”
Del Mar said he supports similar requirements.
“I think that a disclaimer would be the easiest and probably most efficient way of doing it because you don’t want to be able to slow down technology,” he said.
Illinois lawmakers are contemplating something similar. A provision in a large election reform package that was filed at the end of the spring session but never advanced called for requiring disclosures on ads that use AI.