* Capitol News Illinois…

Artificial intelligence-generated images and videos are ushering in a new era for political campaigns and Republican Darren Bailey is leading its introduction in Illinois during his second run for governor.

From showing Gov. JB Pritzker wearing a Green Bay Packers cheesehead and Brett Favre jersey, to cartoonish videos portraying the governor lounging on the beach to the Bailey-Del Mar campaign logo displayed in the Chicago sky like the Bat Signal, Bailey’s campaign has made AI-generated images and videos a regular part of its social media content.

Bailey’s running mate, Aaron Del Mar, told Capitol News Illinois that AI content serves a key purpose for their campaign.

“From an algorithm standpoint, when we post something static, it doesn’t have engagement,” Del Mar said. “When you start posting some of these AI images that you’re describing, the engagement goes off the roof. Your accessibility to the algorithms is off the charts.”

An example: “Taxes for you. Offshore trusts for JB Pritzker.”…

* Back to the story…

Pritzker’s campaign says it won’t be showing anyone AI images. Campaign manager Chris Shallow told Capitol News Illinois the campaign has an internal policy against it.

“We use AI in the way that I think most modern organizations do,” he said. “Largely its around helping our team work smarter on research, data analysis, there are applications in cybersecurity that we use AI for. A lot of behind-the-scenes stuff.” […]

Misleading imagery isn’t new to politics, and campaigns have long distorted images to negatively portray opponents.

“The distinction I would draw between photoshop and AI is that photoshop is based on a real image,” Shallow said. “What Darren Bailey is doing is creating fictional, completely-generated-by-AI content that is not even remotely based in reality.”

I dunno about that. Some of it is pretty standard. The first image is photoshopped from the Rauner campaign. The second is from Bailey’s campaign…

* But using AI comes with hazards. Check out the location of Peoria in this image…

They don’t call it slop for nothing.

* CNI…

“I think those lighthearted ones are definitely appropriate,” he said, pointing to an image they posted of their campaign logo as the Bat Signal over the Chicago skyline, designed to imply the campaign has arrived to help the city like Batman. “I don’t think we’ve done anything with malice towards our opponent. Certainly we cut some edges here and there.”

Yeah, no malice here…

Or here…

* One more time with CNI…

Bailey’s campaign also recently used AI to make a “say no to data centers” campaign button. The post was flagged by Facebook as “AI info,” which irked independent Collin Corbett’s campaign.

“Only a politician like Darren Bailey who will say anything to get elected would post an image generated by AI to claim he’s against data centers,” Corbett said in a social media post.