ChatGPT, the chatbot driven by artificial intelligence, co-writes the election program of the BBB. Volt is the only other party that, when asked, indicates that it will use AI during the upcoming election campaign, according to a survey by BNR.
AI technology is already being used abroad to win over voters. For example, ChatGPT wrote fundraising emails earlier this year. AI-generated images have also appeared in election campaigns in Canada, New Zealand and the US. In June, for example, Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis distributed a fake photo of Donald Trump embracing top virologist Anthony Fauci.
In the run-up to the parliamentary elections in November, similar use of AI in the Netherlands is obvious. BNR therefore asked all parties represented in the House of Representatives whether they intended to use the technology in their campaigns.
BBB and Volt were the only ones who answered in the affirmative. CDA, PVDD, VVD, D66 and SGP say they do not use AI for campaign purposes and do not intend to do so for the time being. All other parties did not comment despite repeated requests.
Core message from BBB
The artificial generation of politically explosive images, as happens abroad, is unanimously rejected by the parties that BNR spoke with. Yet AI is already being used for political purposes.
BBB goes the furthest in this. Party employees use a ChatGPT-based extension to extract the essence of Caroline van der Plas’ contributions to the House of Representatives on various topics. They developed the software for this themselves. The chatbot makes suggestions for the party program on the basis of this.
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‘For example, what is the core message of BBB that you can get from all the contributions about nursing?’, campaign leader Henk Vermeer explains. ChatGPT sums that up for us. It helps us organize.’ The texts of the chatbot only serve as input for the program committee. ‘We do the writing ourselves’, says Vermeer.
Volt uses AI to power a chatbot that answers questions from members about European policies the party favors. It is an experiment, a Volt spokesperson told BNR.
Transparency
The other parties that BNR spoke with do not rule out the political use of AI after the elections. ‘We choose precisely to invest as much as possible in personal contact with voters’, the CDA said.
Some parties first want to investigate the risks in more detail. For example, a spokesperson for the Party for the Animals says he fears that ‘ethical values’ are insufficiently anchored in AI systems. The party points to the doubts that exist about ChatGPT’s respect for existing privacy legislation. The Dutch Data Protection Authority is currently investigating whether the system complies with the rules.
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Oumaima Hajri, AI researcher at Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences, shares this fear. She warns that political parties have too little in-house expertise to handle AI systems with care. She advocates reflection. ‘First make sure that AI ends up as a theme in the election programmes.’ When political parties do use AI, it is important that they are transparent about this, says Hajri.
