Every day, we inch closer to the dystopian future of our nightmares. As part of the upcoming gubernatorial election, Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike has decided to show how up with the times she is by incorporating AI into her campaign.
Meet Tokyo’s Artificial Governor: AI Yuriko
Officially launched on June 13 with a video on X, the AI series has been titled “AI Yuriko News,” and will cover a variety of topics related to the policies she plans to implement. “In order to share the work to date of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government more widely in a manner that is easy to understand, we have harnessed generative AI to create this video,” read the explanation for the release. “AI Yuriko will deliver it on behalf of Yuriko Koike, who is hard at work in her official duties as governor of Tokyo.”
So far, various themes have been introduced, including finances, elderly care and paternity leave. Videos are being published daily.
AI Love It or AI Hate It?
If reach is a key metric, then AI Yuriko has already been a big success as each video gets millions of views. However, one X post, shared just 24 hours after the project was announced, was aimed at calming disgruntled Tokyoites down for thinking their hard-earned money had been used to fund such a strange project.
According to the notice, AI Yuriko is not a Tokyo Metropolitan Government project and is being developed and operated as part of Koike’s political plan. To emphasize the point, the post highlighted that this investment took place without tax money.
If you pay close attention, you can see that AI Yuriko’s movements are a little robotic and that the figure doesn’t quite blend into the rest of the video. However, it’s hard to deny how uncannily similar it is to the governor herself.
