He did it for fun, says Joost Smits. Working until three in the morning on a Friday night and then he had a website built on which he has presented the election program of a political party every day since October 24, always visualized with a large landscape drawing that represents the soul of the party in question. On November 18, four days before the House of Representatives elections, he showed the visual language of all 26 participating parties. Those of parties such as GroenLinks/PvdA and Forum for Democracy will follow.
Smits is a researcher at the Political Academy, a foundation that has been helping political parties, citizen organizations and governments with campaigns through the use of artificial intelligence for ten years. The foundation also sometimes supplies data and infographics to newspapers such as NRC.
Chat GPT summarizes program
Smits believes in the power of visualization to make politics more accessible. Strangely enough, he says, the parties hardly use images in their campaigns. Take the posters. Most of them only contain a short slogan (‘Choose VVD’, ‘Vote D66’), at most accompanied by the head of the party leader.
To portray the election programs as objectively as possible, Smits used advanced technologies. He had Chat-GPT analyze and summarize the parties’ election manifestos. This resulted in instructions with the key points and atmosphere of the relevant programs. This so-called prompts he argued on DALL·E3, an AI program that creates images from textual descriptions.
Smits first checked whether ChatGPT had not missed any important matters. For example, he discovered that the instructions for the SGP did not state that it is a Christian party. The great thing, says Smits, is that you can talk to ChatGPT. “When I indicated by referring to the source text that the Christian element was missing, the program responded, and now I quote literally: “I apologize for the omission. You are absolutely right. The SGP is known for its deep roots in Christian values and traditions, and this is a crucial aspect of their political signature.’”
Visualization via DALL E3
The prompts are on the site with the images. For example, the instructions for Denk, the party with party leader Stephan van Baarle, begin as follows: “Imagine a lively city square during the golden hours of sunset, where the warm light wraps the scene in a soft orange glow. In the center of the square is a large, old tree with lush green leaves, symbolizing growth, strength and connection.”
Smits also publishes new images on social media. To his surprise, the parties involved sometimes responded with no response likes. “From some visualizations you can see that the election programs in question conjure up a limited image. Are you happy with that, I wondered?
The party images are a great starting point for a small quiz. This article contains the visualizations of nine election programs generated by ChatGPT and DALL·E3. Can you recognize which parties are involved? The images can also be regarded as an alternative choice guide, says Smits: which Netherlands do you want to live in?
Quiz: Which parties do you recognize in these images?
Solution at the bottom of the article
Solution at the bottom of the article
Solution at the bottom of the article
Solution at the bottom of the article
Solution at the bottom of the article
Solution at the bottom of the article
Solution at the bottom of the article
Solution at the bottom of the article
Solution: 1. CDA, 2. SGP, 3. VOLT, 4. PVV, 5. BBB, 6. NSC, 7. 50 Plus, 8. D66, 9. SP