New Biden Ad, AI and Information Integrity, Colin Allred Takes on Ted Cruz

Political Briefing Tonight at 8pm EST, Youth Vote Event Thur 3pm EST

Reminders - I’m hosting a live political briefing for the Hopium community tonight at 8pm EST (RSVP). So much to talk about! Tomorrow Laura Brill of the Civics Center will be joining us at 3pm EST to talk about the youth vote (Learn more/RSVP). Both will be recorded and available on the Hopium site if you can’t make it live.

New Biden Ad - The Biden campaign unveiled a new ad today, Long Way. It’s the third ad or video from the campaign, and like the first two, it is really good. Watch, and read the transcript of the ad below.

Colin Allred’s Powerful Launch Video in Texas - this is one of the best launch videos for a candidate I’ve ever seen:

AI And The Need for A Big Conversation About Information Integrity - AI is here now in American politics, and it is going to dramatically disrupt our domestic discourse. There’s no question now. Last week the RNC dropped an AI-assisted video attacking Biden (see below). Yesterday the Daily Show released a spoof AI-generated Biden ad narrated in his voice. More of these AI-generated videos and audio are going to come at us quickly now.

As I wrote a few days ago, the US needs a big conversation about information integrity and the degradation of our daily discourse. And it needs to be about far more than about TikTok and AI, and include topics like:

• the harms of social/surveillance media

• better privacy protections for alll Americans

• countering foreign propaganda and disinformation

• what to do about a Republican organization masquerading as a news organization that encouraged an insurrection and lies all the time

• and the challenges of AI

While these things may feel a bit overwhelming and even scary, the information environment around us is changing rapidly, and we must develop strategies to ensure we are successful this cycle. Getting louder and taking more responsibility for making our case in our daily discourse is in my mind a critical piece of what we must do. But the way AI has already made its way into our politics makes standing up this big conversation far more urgent now.

For those who want to dive in here a bit more be sure to read this recent speech on foreign information manipulation and interference by the #2 in the European Union, Josep Borrell. The Europeans are a bit ahead of us in creating this broader conversation that is so desperately needed here.

Transcript for Biden’s new ad, Long Way - from YouTube (and remember transcripts of ads are the words as they are spoken in the ad - they are spoken words, not meant to be written or follow formal grammar or sentence structure. It’s all more poetry than prose, and these are the words and phrases that will define our understanding of the campaign in the coming days):

when he came to office the pandemic was

raging the economy was reeling and

American democracy was under attack then

Joe Biden went to work he brought

stability to the country got the economy

moving again defended our democracy two

years later America's come a long way

the pandemic no longer controls our

lives and over 12 million jobs have been

created that's more jobs in two years

than any presidents created in four

historic laws have been passed to

rebuild the nation's roads and bridges

to invest into computer chips that will

power the future to tackle the climate

crisis and to lower the cost of

prescription drugs he did it all while

lowering the deficit by 1.7 trillion

dollars and without raising taxes on

anyone making under four hundred

thousand dollars a year

now he's running for re-election to

finish the job to provide affordable

child care and elder care for America's

hard-working families to protect Social

Security and Medicare to pass a minimum

tax for billionaires to make Roe

once again the law of the land

to ban assault weapons and to protect

the right to vote Joe Biden's never been

more optimistic about America's future

we have to be the nation we've always

been at our best hopeful forward-looking

for the United States of America and

there's nothing beyond our capacity if

we do it together