AI tech: the future of S Korea’s polls

SEOUL – In a crowded campaign office in Seoul, young, trendy staffers are using deepfake technology to try to achieve the near-impossible: make a middle-aged, establishment South Korean presidential candidate cool.

Armed with hours of specially-recorded footage of opposition People Power Party candidate Yoon Suk-yeol, the team has created a digital avatar of the frontrunner — and set “AI Yoon” loose on the campaign trail ahead of a March 9 election.

From a deepfake video of Barack Obama insulting Donald Trump to failed New York mayoral candidate Andrew Yang campaigning in the metaverse, AI technology has been used in elections before. But AI Yoon’s creators believe he is the world’s first official deepfake candidate — a concept gaining traction in South Korea, which has the world’s fastest average internet speeds.

With neatly-combed black hair and a smart suit, the avatar looks near-identical to the real South Korean candidate but uses salty language and meme-ready quips in a bid to engage younger voters who get their news online. It’s been a huge hit. AI Yoon has attracted millions of views since making his debut January 1.

Tens of thousands of people have asked questions, but it’s not the usual policy-related fare.

“President Moon Jae-in and (rival presidential candidate) Lee Jae-myung are drowning. Who do you save?” one user asks AI Yoon. “I’d wish them both good luck,” the avatar snaps back.

At first glance, AI Yoon could pass for an actual candidate — an apt demonstration of how far artificially generated videos, known as deepfakes, have come in the last few years.

The real Yoon recorded more than 3,000 sentences — 20 hours of audio and video — to provide enough data for a local deepfake technology company to create the avatar. “Words that are often spoken by Yoon are better reflected in AI Yoon,” said Baik Kyeong-hoon, the director of the AI Yoon team.

What the avatar actually says is written by his campaign team, not by the candidate himself. “We try to come up with humorous and satirical answers,” Baik told AFP.

The approach has paid off. AI Yoon’s pronouncements have made headlines in South Korean media, and seven million people have visited the “Wiki Yoon” website to question the avatar.

“If we had only produced politically correct statements, we would not have this reaction,” Baik said. “The political establishment has been too slow in the face of a fast-changing society,” he added.

When answering questions posed by users, AI Yoon mockingly refers to President Moon and his rival Lee as “Moon Ding Dong” and “Lee Ding Dong”.

“I want to ask Moon Ding Dong this question: Who is our real enemy?” AI Yoon says, in a thinly-veiled swipe at what his critics say is the president’s more conciliatory approach towards Pyongyang.

The avatar politician has also used humour to try and deflect attention from Yoon’s past scandals, for example claims he received inappropriate fruit gifts from a construction company when he was a senior prosecutor. “I am not beholden to persimmons and melons. I am only beholden to the people,” AI Yoon said — although his campaign was later forced to acknowledge he had accepted some gifts. The kind of script used by the campaign for AI Yoon draws on the language used in the online gaming world, Kim Myuhng-joo, professor of information security at Seoul Women’s University, told local media.

Tech-savvy Baik and his two other team members — all in their 20s and 30s — are some of the youngest staffers in the sprawling Yoon campaign.

They come with AI Yoon’s responses in rapid-fire brainstorming sessions, which can take as little as 30 minutes, in contrast to the carefully-honed rhetoric usually found in public policy debates.

South Korea’s election monitor allows AI candidates to campaign on the condition it is clearly identified as deepfake technology, and does not spread misinformation.

The technology has more often been flagged as harmful — the 2018 deepfake video of Obama was produced by Oscar-winning filmmaker Jordan Peele to warn viewers about trusting material they encounter online. But Baik thinks AI is the future of election campaigns.

“It’s so easy to create huge amounts of content with deepfake technology,” he told AFP. “It is inevitable that this will be used more and more.”

14 hopefuls set sights

Campaigning for South Korea’s presidential election officially kicked off for a 22-day run ahead of the election to be held on March 9. A total of 14 candidates are competing for the presidency of a single five-year term, according to the National Election Commission.

During the campaign period, candidates are allowed to make speeches in open spaces with loudspeakers, distribute leaflets about campaign pledges, do advertising campaigns on television and radio, and send text messages and emails to voters.

This will be the first presidential election to be held after the legal voting age was changed from 19 to 18 in 2020.

Covid-19 patients and those under quarantine will be allowed to vote on election day for 1.5 hours from 6:00 pm local time after the end of regular polling.

Opinion poll results will be banned for release from March 3, six days before the election, to prevent the results from affecting the choices of voters.

According to the latest survey by Realmeter, support for Lee Jaemyung from the governing Democratic Party rose 1 percentage point over the week to 39.1 percent last week. “I’d become an ‘economic’ president who makes the Republic of Korea among the G5 or the top five powerful nations,” Lee told his supporters, adding that he would be “a president who pulls together public opinions as one”.

Support for the main conservative opposition People Power Party’s Yoon Suk-yeol slipped 1.8 percentage points to 41.6 per cent last week.

Ahn Cheol-soo of the centrist People’s Party won 7.7 per cent of support, followed by Sim Sang-jeung of the progressive Justice Party with 2.8 per cent.

The results were based on a poll of 3,040 voters conducted from February 6 to 11. The margin of error was plus and minus 1.8 percentage points with a 95 per cent confidence level. The winner will be inaugurated as South Korea’s next president on May 10 for a single five-year term. Current President Moon Jae-in is barred by law from seeking reelection.

With input from AFP and China Daily