One Nation’s New AI Ad Depicts Gays, Lefties, & Minorities “Coming Out” As Conservative

A new AI-generated One Nation ad produced for the party’s Victorian election campaign has sparked outrage over its stereotyping and demonisation of marginalised communities, not to mention its appropriation of queer culture.  

The Ad: What Actually Happens?

The clip, entitled “Coming Out”, begins with a despondent family eating dinner in silence. The mother is wearing a shiny blue wig, while the father’s T-shirt is emblazoned with a rainbow, beneath which reads the word “YES”.

After the latter asks his daughter to “pass the nutritional yeast”, the focus turns to his son, a man in his 20s or 30s whose comparatively muted stylings were likely generated with a prompt akin to “normal bloke”. 

When asked why he had “barely touched” his “vegan mung beans”, the son confesses he “can’t do this anymore”. 

“Mum, dad, I have something to tell you,” he says, standing from the dinner table, “I’m conservative.”

Relief immediately washes over the family as they too admit they had secretly been One Nation supporters all along, the mother removing her wig to reveal short orange hair resembling that of Party Leader Pauline Hanson herself.

One Nation’s AI Montage Of “Undesirables” Coming Out

This is followed by a lazy, unintelligent, and deeply irresponsible montage of caricatures. Each of these AI-generated individuals, many racist and villainising cliches, go on to renounce their former political allegiances to admit their fidelity to One Nation.

Among them, we see a middle-aged ABC news presenter call for the broadcaster to be defunded; a hooded black man standing outside a residential window holding a machete, who admits he “shouldn’t be on bail”; a bearded man wearing a turban-like headpiece demanding “no more mass migration”; and another bearded man of Middle Eastern appearance who appears to be removing a strap-on bomb, who admits he “shouldn’t have been allowed into the country”.

The montage concludes with an elderly Aboriginal man sitting in the Australian outback, who says he just wishes “money went to people on the basis of need, not identity”.

The ad finishes with hundreds of these newly uncloseted conservatives storming Victoria’s Parliament House, among them a woman wearing a rainbow lanyard screaming “we love One Nation!”.

Backlash Against One Nation

Critics have deplored the ad’s careless promotion of racist stereotypes, while others have problematised its use of AI. Many are now calling for the use of artificial intelligence in election campaigns to be banned, citing the technology’s ability to present artificial actors and fabricated realities as real.

Many LGBTQ+ individuals have also taken offense at the clip, claiming that a queer person “coming out” is in no way comparable to an individual “coming out” as conservative; For one thing, one’s sexual orientation is not a choice, whereas voting for a far-right populist party with ignorant leadership and openly racist policies certainly is.

Others are simply unsurprised at Hanson’s misunderstanding of such a significant aspect of queer culture, given Pauline Hanson’s track-record of cringing at the mere thought of LGBTQ+ people existing in public.