Thank you to Hongbin Jeong and Nazirul Asrar from MONEY FM 89.3 for inviting me to discuss how Gen AI is being used to create campaign songs and online content in the ongoing Johor elections.
Here’s a summary of what I said:
🔵 Gen AI apps like Suno dramatically lower the cost and time needed to produce campaign content like songs or jingles. Suno costs US$8 a month, versus thousands of dollars for commissioning a songwriter and a singer.
🔵 The music industry has spent the last few decades promoting Autotune, which makes humans sound like robots. So people cannot tell the difference between an Autotuned singer and an AI singer. “The chickens have come home to roost!” (Yes, I said that on radio)
🔵 While AI can help campaign teams generate a high volume of online content for younger audiences (eg. instant jingles), it cannot replace face-to-face engagement or authentic acts of leadership.
🔵 The biggest risks of using AI in political campaigning are copyright infringement, AI-enabled misinformation and the misuse of synthetic voices that could misrepresent public figures or celebrities (eg. singers).
🔵 As AI-generated content proliferates, I believe that voters will become fatigued by AI slop and demand greater human interaction and authenticity.
🔵 Politicians will obviously be held to high standards of transparency and authenticity, even as society continues to define the role of AI in our lives.
Also, thank you to Lester Kok, for connecting the MoneyFM team and me!
Spotify version of the interview:
MoneyFM website version.