On March 9, South Korea will hold presidential elections, in which citizens will have to choose between four candidates, one of them with a virtual avatar made with technology deepfake.
This is Yoon Suk-yeol, a traditional politician who, in his quest to attract votes from younger citizens, turned to social media to campaign.
However, the campaign team of Yoon Suk-yeol, candidate of the opposition People Power Party, thought that the best way to connect with the young electorate was to use a deepfake to create an avatar of himself made with artificial intelligence technology.
Deepfakes are virtual human representations that appear on video and are created with artificial intelligence. Photographs, dozens of hours of role model video, and a script are required. Creating a deepfake is like creating a digital character.
For the creation of his deepfake, Yoon had to record more than 3,000 phrases for a total of 20 hours of audio.
According to the agency AFPYoon’s avatar campaigning for him on social networks has been a success, grabbing front pages in newspapers with national circulation, and above all, attracting visits from millions of potential voters to a site created by his campaign team so that citizens can ask questions.
The success of the avatar lies in the fact that it responds with ease in an ironic way to questions that are beyond political solemnity.
– “If President Moon Jae-in and Lee Jae-myung (another opposition candidate) are drowning, who would you save?” a voter asked him.
– “I wish you both good luck,” replied the deepfake.
“Phrases spoken by Yoon have a better impact when spoken by Yoon created with artificial intelligence,” said Baik Kyeong-hoon, head of the team that designed the avatar.
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