It’s the night of Halloween and Jess Wilson has appeared on social media feeds with a warning about a scary prospect: “Americanised healthcare” under a future Liberal government. There’s just one problem: Wilson never said this. The election campaign video, posted to Victorian Labor’s social media accounts on Saturday, is an AI-generated depiction of Wilson, complete with a voice that sounds just like her.
In it, she clutches a bill listing the supposed costs of US-style healthcare: $150,000 for a heart attack, $6,000 for an ambulance and $40,000 to have a baby. At her side is One Nation’s Victorian leader, Warren Pickering, curiously sporting a Liberal party badge. The claims made in the video stem from comments made at a press conference last month, after Wilson announced a $1.27bn plan to pay private hospitals to conduct public elective surgeries to help reduce the waitlist.
When asked if it was bad to “Americanise” the state’s healthcare system, Wilson responded: “Not at all.” “This is happening in Queensland today. In fact, the Labor government has implemented it here in the past,” she said at the time. The premier, Ben Carroll, on Wednesday defended the video’s content, telling ABC Radio Melbourne: “Jess Wilson herself has said there is nothing wrong with Americanising our health system.
She has said that, and every Victorian should be terrified by that.” But Wilson said it was a “desperate smear campaign” and that “in no way, shape or form are we Americanising the healthcare system here in Victoria”. The Liberal party campaign described the video as “garbage” and urged voters to treat it that way. Yet it is also using AI on social media ahead of this month’s election.
Among the Liberal party’s social media posts include AI-generated videos of the premier, Ben Carroll, asleep at his desk. This followed a front-page Herald Sun story on 24 October, in which unnamed sources accused the Labor leader of taking naps on the job. e Labor’s campaign headquarters, not authorised to speak publicly, said the Liberals “threw the first brick” by creating that video. But it’s not confined to the major parties throwing “bricks”.
Conservative lobby group Advance Australia last month released an AI-generated video that fabricates a Labor victory on election night, complete with former premiers Jacinta Allan and a North Face-clad Daniel Andrews. A video shown at One Nation’s launch event conjured up inflammatory tropes of people from various ethnic backgrounds. It has led experts and the Greens to call for the practice to be banned altogether.
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