Stronger political advertising laws are needed to prevent misinformation following outrage over a deepfake video of the Queensland premier dancing, experts say.
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The Liberal-National Party in Queensland posted a video on the social media platform TikTok showing Steven Miles grooving to a popular 2000s song.
It was captioned: "POV: my rent is up $60 a week, my power bill is up 20 per cent, but the premier made a sandwich on TikTok".
But the video was created using generative artificial intelligence technology that can create convincing photos or videos of a person or event from scratch.
The video is labelled with a disclaimer it was created with AI.
Experts said although the video was labelled as AI, there was no guarantee other fake content before the October 26 state election will do the same.
"No one benefits from a race to the bottom where fake content is used to ridicule political rivals," director of the Australia Institute's Democracy and Accountability program Bill Browne said.
Mr Browne called for new political advertisement laws in Queensland to prevent misinformation or deception.
South Australia and the ACT have truth in political advertising legislation.
The Australian Electoral Commission raised concerns to an AI inquiry earlier this year about the lack of legislative tools to control the potential breach of "electoral integrity and citizen trust" that the technology poses.
Social media expert Susan Grantham said regulating the space was difficult given people outside of the political party could be generating deep fake content.
"I'm not condoning AI-generated imagery in political election campaigning but the fact it's being done with disclaimers is a more positive step," she told AAP.
Dr Grantham said platforms such as TikTok could make the disclaimer labelling more prominent to show users what is AI-generated.
The premier called the video a "turning point for democracy" as Queenslanders needed to keep a wary eye for misleading social media posts.
"Until now, we've known that photos could be doctored or photoshopped but we've been trained to believe what we see in video," Mr Miles told reporters on Tuesday.
"For a political party now to be willing to use AI to make deepfake attack videos, it's a very dangerous turning point."
He guaranteed there would be no deepfake videos used by the state's Labor party for electoral advertising.
But the LNP Queensland branch defended its post, claiming the Labor Party has uploaded AI-generated videos to social media.
"Young Queenslanders have been hit with higher rents and increased power prices under Labor, and this post - which is clearly labelled as being created with AI - is an example of one way we can share that message," a spokesperson said.
"Steven Miles knows AI is a tool commonly used by many creators on this platform and knows his own party has used it."
Australian Associated Press
