AI is already here. Not just in business, in the political and electoral landscape too. And right now, the referee doesn’t understand the rules of its own game. Days before telling political parties they must label their AI-generated content, South Africa’s own Electoral Commission posted an AI-altered image to promote voter registration.
Nobody flagged it internally. Nobody labelled it. If the body writing the rulebook can’t follow its own draft rules, what hope does anyone else have? I said something close to this on national television earlier this year. Mandatory labelling of AI-generated campaign content wasn’t optional, I said, it was where this had to go. I wasn’t guessing. I’ve watched this exact pattern play out in industries with far less on the line than an election. So, when the IEC’s own draft regulations surfaced, requiring parties to label AI-generated material and take responsibility for misinformation on their own platforms, I wasn’t surprised. I was relieved. Not because I called it, being right isn’t the point. The point is that the gap between what should happen and what does happen in AI governance is usually measured in years. Here, it’s being measured in weeks. That’s actually a good sign for South Africa, even if the Commission’s own conduct shows the habit hasn’t caught up with the policy yet.
There’s a reason this matters more than it looks like it does. This year, South African government ministers were caught relying on AI-generated content that turned out to be hallucinated, plausible-sounding, confidently stated, entirely false. My first reaction was amusement. It’s not the first time I’ve heard this one. A man once tried to build his own AI lawyer and stood in front of a judge citing legal precedent that simply didn’t exist. Funny, until you think about what it actually costs.
Because here’s the political version of that same mistake. Political parties reaching voters through AI, often for the first time, aren’t just risking an embarrassing headline. They’re risking the thing they can least afford to lose, trust. A message that was previously solid, credible, worth hearing by the masses, becomes diluted the moment it’s built on something false. And trust doesn’t rebuild at the same speed it breaks.
It’s the electoral equivalent of walking out of a job interview and only then thinking of the answer you should have given. Except in an election, there’s no walking back in. AI can genuinely help a party reach people faster, understand what actually matters to them, and communicate with a precision that simply wasn’t possible five years ago. That’s real, and it’s valuable. But hand it the microphone without checking what it says first, and it won’t just cost you one bad answer. It’ll cost you the room. Which brings me to the only real instruction I’d give anyone reading this, a party, a regulator, or a voter. AI can be an extraordinarily powerful tool across the political landscape. But right now, too many parties are trying to decorate the house before the concrete foundations have even set. You don’t win an election the way you post a viral image. You win it the same way you build a house, one brick at a time, verified, tested, load-bearing before the next one goes on top.
An unlabelled image from the body that’s supposed to set the standard. Ministers citing facts that never existed. It’s the same mistake, in a different room. Skipping the foundation to get to the decoration faster. AI isn’t the risk in this election. Impatience is.
- Phil Pelucha, Revenue Architect with a Phdc in AI Integration.
