Can artificial intelligence become a weapon in the service of politics? On this issue, the far right is trying to get ahead in order to promote its ideas. Jean-Rémi Baudot’s political brief.
It’s still a bit of a gimmick, but Eric Zemmour’s party is the first to set foot in the door of artificial intelligence. Last week, Reconquest launched Zemmour.Chat, a conversational robot allowing to answer questions based on the ideas of Eric Zemmour. For each answer, about fifteen lines with a link to the Reconquest program. It’s clean, readable and totally made by an artificial intelligence.
>> We explain how Midjourney, Lensa or ChatGPT work, these artificial intelligence tools sources of technical prowess (and concerns)
AI at the service of far-right theses?
Obviously, it’s political marketing, but if Reconquest advances on this subject, it is because AI is taken very seriously in the entourage of Eric Zemmour. Its lieutenants – Stanislas Rigault, founder of Generation Z, Samuel Lafont in digital, influencer Damien Rieu – claim the daily use of this software. Reconquest leaflets and visuals have already been created using the artificial intelligence software MidJourney.
Beyond tools at the service of political communication, Stanislas Rigault says he wants to understand and anticipate the upheavals of artificial intelligence, such as digital sovereignty or the labor market…”Trades will be turned upside down“, hammers the young zemmourist. But the AI also serves as an echo of the obsessions of Eric Zemmour. In Reconquest, some go further: “Will this make it possible, tomorrow, to do without labor immigration?” is, for example, one of the questions on the table.
“ChatGPT is the other great replacement”
Questions that also exist at the National Rally: the fears conveyed by AI are integrated into themes dear to the far right. It’s true about immigration. This is also true for bioethics or the fears of transhumanism, the fantasized project of crossing between man and machine. “ChatGPT is the other great replacement“, thus often repeats Jordan Bardella, who discussed it at length during the recent evening of Valeurs Actuelles. He is due to talk about it again on June 19 at a conference organized at European level.
“These are subjects where we are less audible, but we need to reach new audiences,” he explains in private. Objective: the upper middle classes, populations where the RN is still struggling to settle. Artificial intelligence will be “to senior executives what the Industrial Revolution was to workers“, predicts the president of the RN.
A small anxiety-provoking touch to try to mobilize new voters, even if it means forgetting that it is rather the intermediate professions that will probably be most quickly affected by the effects of artificial intelligence. An electorate where the RN is precisely more present.