Toronto needs a Blade Runner to help us figure out what’s real and what’s artificial.
asserted
what → need → Runner
In the film series, Blade Runners hunt androids disguised as humans.
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Runners → hunt → humans
In Toronto, we need them to root out our AI generated politics.
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them → need → politics
Brad Bradford’s mayoral campaign has come under fire for using an app called Victory that, as an investigation by Canada’s National Observer found, “gamifies” political campaigns by awarding participants points for uploading their contacts with possibly-lax privacy standards around voter data.
uncertain
investigation → come → data
Further, the app also awards points for posting AI-generated messages to social media.
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app → award → media
The Star’s Mahdis Habibinia asked Bradford himself about using the app and he said the reporting was false and that there’s no rewards.
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reporting → ask → app
In response, the National Observer released audio of a Bradford campaign Zoom meeting where a presenter said a points system would be used and that there will be rewards.
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system → release → meeting
It all creates ethical and trust issues.
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It → create → issues
Beyond the potential privacy breaches around contact collection, an app like this can blur the distinction between heartfelt support and what is sometimes called “AI-slop”: shoddy or thin material passed off as natural or human made.
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what → blur → support
The Victory app taps into our worst social media impulses to comment on everything, supercharging it, turning supporters into human-machines posting similar messages.
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app → tap → messages
An older term for flooding the zone with provocative, sometimes propagandic, material was “agitprop.”
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term → flood → material
This new version could be called “agitslop.”
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version → call → ?
Bradford’s dip into AI technology comes a year after a Toronto group used fake, AI-generated residents to oppose transit priority lanes on Bathurst, including a “spokesperson” who also appeared in dozens of unrelated videos supporting different causes and products.
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who → come → causes
In another recent case, ABC Toronto, a political advocacy group that formed as a conservative-leaning version of Progress Toronto, used what appears to be an AI-generated image to oppose the University Avenue bike lanes back in May.
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what → form → May
They proclaimed University should be treated as a hospital corridor first, writing “it is a critical access route for patients, ambulances, hospital staff, caregivers, and emergency services.”
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it → proclaim → patients
The bizarre image ABC used depicted a fantasy University Avenue where the bike lanes became two-way cycling highways, unlike the one-way lanes on either side that actually exist.
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that → use → side
Inexplicably, the bike lane also had a TTC bus in it, unintentionally demonstrating how, in reality, ambulances can bypass congestion using the wide bike lanes.
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ambulances → have → lanes
The buildings ABC depicted alongside the sidewalk don’t exist on University either.
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ABC → depict → University
It’s not Toronto.
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It → ’ → ?
Other things are quite real, however, like the coalition of health care workers who rallied on University Avenue this week.
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who → rally → Avenue
There, doctors and nurses unveiled a letter signed by 650 health care workers in support of bike lanes on University and elsewhere in the city.
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doctors → unveil → city
Also real, as opposed to ABC’s apparent AI-image, was Toronto Fire deputy chief Jim Jessop saying, in 2024, that emergency response times had improved since Bloor bike lanes were installed.
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lanes → oppose → 2024
Real, too, was the nearly 1000-person-strong Critical Mass ride that cycled Bloor last week in protest of lane removal.
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that → cycle → removal
MPs are even split on using it in Parliament, and the federal government is quite AI-bullish too.
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government → split → Parliament
While there are surely practical uses for AI as a tool, anything that comes with the evangelical hard sell that AI has should trigger some critical caution, as should some of the mounting harms.
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some → be → harms
The creeping unreality into the political arena is another thing to be wary of, a cautionary tale for voters, but also the politicians and civic groups creating it.
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unreality → creep → it
Trust is earned over a long time, but it can disappear overnight.
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it → earn → time
A hackneyed buzzword, authenticity is hard to define.
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authenticity → define → ?
Even before AI, politicians chased authenticity, a sense of realness and a “what you see is what you get” vibe.
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you → chase → what
Technology confuses things though.
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Technology → confuse → things
In real, physical life it’s harder to fake things (for now).
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it → ’ → things
Imagine the Victory app as a one-on-one conversation: how weird and off-putting it would be if the person you were talking to kept looking at their phone and read a script to you written by AI.
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you → imagine → AI
Social media insulates us from machine-to-human mimicking, but that’s essentially what AI generated posts are.
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posts → insulate → mimicking
An organization that puts out sloppy, fake images or robotic, repetitious text, isn’t respecting the intelligence or dignity of the intended recipient.
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that → put → recipient
If they can’t bother to take a real photo, making sure an image represents reality, what does it say about everything else they purport to stand for?
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they → bother → everything
As AI slop metastasizes, it could usher in a renaissance of public life and public space.
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it → metastasize → life
Being around actual humans, in protest or conversation, out in the city may be the last honest place to be, no Blade Runner required.
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Runner → require → city
The Aporia
