Parliamentary elections were held in Belarus a couple of weeks ago. They were a formality, as there were only candidates supporting an autocratic president.
A peculiar opposition candidate appeared in the Belarusian parliamentary elections: Jas Gaspadar, a virtual character created by artificial intelligence. Among other things, the Poles tell about it Belsat and American Semaphore.
No other opposition candidates were seen in the elections. Belarus is practically a dictatorship, and you can go to jail for expressing wrong thoughts. In prisons is evaluated around 1,500 political prisoners.
The opposition has gone into exile, and it is led by someone who lives in Lithuania Svyatlana Tsihanouskaya.
– The elections in Belarus are a fraud. Here is something genuine: We have created a virtual candidate, Tsihanouskaja wrote on the short message service X.
– Honestly, he is more real than any administration candidate. And the best part? He cannot be arrested!
Jas Gaspadar “lives” in an artificial intelligence application. There he is a 35-year-old father of two who lives in Minsk. He says that he appreciates Belarusian values.
In his campaign, Gaspadar focused on demanding free elections, a new constitution, the release of political prisoners and a ban on the import of nuclear weapons.
– This artificial intelligence bot can talk to people without putting them in danger, share thoughts and answer questions, Svjatlana Tsihanouskaja told the Irish Broadcasting Company for RTE.
According to the New Belarus movement led by Tsihanouskaja, the chatbot Jas Gaspadar has had 5,000 conversations, and Gaspadar’s Youtube video has been viewed thousands of times.
Senior expert working in think tank Demos Helsinki Johannes Anttila considers the use of a “stunt” or stand-in actor like Gaspadar as a creative solution in the framework of Belarus.
– It’s a great way to take up airspace and draw attention to what’s wrong with their country. There is no democracy, Anttila tells by phone.
In the parliamentary elections held in Belarus a couple of weeks ago, only the president was allowed Alexander Lukashenko viable candidates.
In the video below, you can watch when Lukashenko went to vote himself – with a bouquet of flowers for the election official.
– A virtual candidate can be a sign of hope in an authoritarian system, says Anttila.
He also sees problems in the fact that artificial intelligence applications are used in election campaigns. Examples have already been seen in the ongoing presidential primaries in the United States.
President Joe Biden digitally manipulated there have been phone calls urging Democrats not to vote for him. The supporters of Trump, who is aspiring to become a candidate, have, on the other hand, been busy images with the help of artificial intelligenceaimed at getting African Americans to vote for Trump.
– The big danger of these tools is that you don’t know how to distinguish what is true and what is not. They offer a strong opportunity for disinformation and deepfakes through sound, image and video, Johannes Anttila points out.
Deepfakes are deep fakes built with the help of artificial intelligence.
Anttila calls for more legislation, even though he considers the EU’s future artificial intelligence regulation a step in the right direction. He wonders why US and EU legislators have noticed the issue only now, when the applications have been introduced to the market.
– Now we are late because the technologies are already in use.