Here’s what the UN logo would look like if sea levels keep rising
Plus: I just talked to Ashley, the first A.I. political campaign phone banker
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Here’s what the UN logo would look like if sea levels keep rising
I just talked to Ashley, the first A.I. political campaign phone banker
It’s here: AFP Action’s ad for Nikki Haley
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Here’s what the UN logo would look like if sea levels keep rising
The United Nations emblem adopted in 1946 shows a world map centered on the North Pole surrounded by an olive branch symbolizing peace. But what happens to that map if the ice caps keep melting?
That’s what a Norwegian communications agency imagined for an unauthorized revision of the logo. Like Facebook updating to a new shade of blue, most viewers might not notice the difference between the UN’s official logo and the rebrand from Publicis Norway when looking at the two logos side by side. Land masses are just barely shaved off or sanded down slightly, but it puts cities home to millions underwater. As the agency says in its brand guide for the project, “Minor changes. Major impact.”
Called “The Climate Changed Logo,” the logo uses the UN’s prediction of how rising sea levels might remake coastlines if the temperature increases by 2.9 degrees by 2100. Large portions of Egypt find themselves in the Mediterranean Sea and the landmass of the Netherlands is halved. The Maldives, a chain of islands in the Indian Ocean, is deleted, as are large portions of the Bahamas. In the U.S., the Eastern coastline is reshaped near Washington and New York City.
“Although design is our tool of choice, this goes beyond the lines of vector graphics,” Publicis Norway designer Thale Riiser told It’s Nice That. “These reshaped and deleted areas are home to millions and millions of people. Knowing that makes this simple graphic physically hurt.”
The UN estimates nearly 900 million people live in coastal areas at low elevation that are threatened by rising sea levels, or about 10% of the world’s population.
As part of UN climate talks in Dubai, representatives from nearly 200 countries agreed today for the first time to reduce fossil fuel consumption. U.S. special climate envoy John Kerry said the agreement “sends very strong messages to the world” and Al Gore said it’s “the bare minimum” and “long overdue.”
“Whether this is a turning point that truly marks the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era depends on the actions that come next and the mobilization of finance required to achieve them,” Gore said in a statement.
I just talked to Ashley, the first A.I. political campaign phone banker
Shamaine Daniels is a Democratic city council member in Harrisburg, Pa., who’s running for U.S. House. Last year she ran against Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and lost, but she’s trying again next year, now with the help of artificial intelligence.
Voters in Pennsylvania’s 10th District have recently started receiving calls from “Ashley,” a two-way A.I. voice chatbot. In a demo call with me today, Ashley introduced itself as an artificial intelligence volunteer for Shamaine Daniels’ run for Congress calling on a recorded line. In an automated voice, Ashley asked for my name, provided introductory biographical information on Daniels and her priorities, asked what issues were important to me, and told me where Daniels stood on those issues. Like a human campaign volunteer, Ashley asks whether you’d like to volunteer or donate to Daniels’ campaign.
“A lot” goes into making the model for Ashley, said Ilya Mouzykantskii, the co-founder of Civox, a campaign tech startup that built Ashley and other characters using technology from co-founder Adam Reis’ A.I. startup Conversation Labs. Mouzykantskii told me work on Ashley and other characters began over a year ago and they’ve been working with Daniels’ campaign for more than a month.
“It's a fully managed product in the sense that we go to our client, in this case the campaign, and really try to understand both the candidate and their positions on things, what the campaign is eager to emphasize, their goals for voter contact, and feed that back and match that with technical capabilities and go through several cycles of iteration until everyone across the board is happy with where we've got to,” he said.
Mouzykantskii believes the technology “compliments a lot of existing voter contact tools,” like volunteer phone banking, paid phone banking, and door knocking, rather than replace it.
“The new thing here is the fact that this allows you to have a two-way conversation with the voters and Ashley asks open-ended questions and the answers don't go into a black box,” he said. Voter feedback can help campaigns gain a richer understanding of public sentiment and build their platforms.
Mouzykantskii said the company is “treading carefully and we're making design decisions that are aimed at being transparent and forthright and not tricking,” from Ashley’s purposefully artificial-sounding voice to disclosing Ashley is A.I. at the top of the call.
“We think that’s not necessary from a legal perspective but we think it’s important,” he said. “We're very aware that we will have competitors and those competitors will be less scrupulous because the boundaries of the law currently allow you to do a lot, more than we are currently doing, and that's a major concern of ours. And I think it should be a major concern of everyone, not just regulators or legislators, but also the voting American public.”
The misuse of A.I. technology in political campaigns has become a concern ahead of the 2024 election. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign used images that appeared to be A.I.-generated in an ad, and his allied super PAC used an A.I.-generated voice of Trump. In May, the American Association of Political Consultants came out against deceptive generative A.I. content in campaigns.
Daniels lost to Perry in 2022 by about 24,000 votes. An ally of former President Donald Trump, Perry was subpoenaed by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and last month, an unsealed court filing revealed Perry contacted state Pennsylvania state lawmakers before the attack on the Capitol.
What do you think about A.I. phonebanking in campaigns?
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It’s here: AFP Action’s ad for Nikki Haley
In February, the group Americans for Prosperity Action announced it was prepared to endorse a Republican candidate in the presidential primary for the first time in its history.
After about 10 months of gladhanding, speeches, and debates with fewer and fewer candidates that fewer and fewer people watched, the anti-Trump conservative group backed by billionaire megadonor Charles Koch finally announced last month that candidate would be former U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley, and they’re now running ads in Southern and early primary states in support of her campaign.
Their ad “Opportunity” opens with a shot of the Statue of Liberty and an appeal to the nation: “America, it’s time… to turn the page… and choose a new leader.”
The ad’s script is written like bullet points from a Powerpoint presentation: “That proven leader, Nikki Haley. A positive vision for the future. Nikki Haley’s plan. Drive down our debt, take on reckless spending from both parties, unleash America’s energy economy. Nikki Haley. A bold leader. She’ll deliver on her promises and restore the American dream.”
Online, the ad is running in Arkansas, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia, according to Google’s ad library.
AFP Action seeded the Haley spot with earlier ads that ran this fall calling on Republicans to move on from Trump. The narrator in their ad “Choices” says, “We need to choose a new leader and let Trump go.” In “Fold Em,” a group of male actors playing cards over beer talk about why it’s time to move on from Trump: The media is never ever going to let up on him, they stacked the deck against him, Trump was great but I’m not betting on him this time, etc.
Meanwhile, the Haley campaign is expanding their own advertising messaging following their first TV ad of the campaign, released earlier this month. Titled “American Strength,” her campaign’s new 30-second spot is part biographical, part foreign policy focused, featuring Haley’s husband Michael, who’s currently deployed with the U.S. Army, and encapsulating Haley’s stance on world affairs. “If Russia wins, China wins. If Hamas wins, Iran wins. And if evil succeeds, it puts all of us at risk,” she says. The ad is running in Iowa and New Hampshire, according to CBS News, which first reported the ad.
Have you seen this?
This portrait of Oprah has been added to the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. The portrait, by Chicago-based artist Shawn Michael Warren, depicts Oprah Winfrey in a purple dress at her California home. “I don’t know how I got from Mississippi to Montecito,” Winfrey said at the unveiling. “God can dream a bigger dream for you than you can even dream for yourself.” She said she chose to wear purple “because for me that color has been seminal in my life.” 💜
Artist Hajime Sorayama says Beyoncé “should have asked me” before using this look on the Renaissance Tour. Hajime Sorayama, a renowned Japanese illustrator, took aim at Beyoncé on Monday in an Instagram post pointing out similarities between her on-screen visuals and some of his own works. [Complex]
See the monumental Tiffany stained-glass window the Met just acquired. The 1912 work will be installed in the museum’s American Wing in 2024. [Artnet News]
🔒 YELLO subscriber exclusive:
History of political design
Goldwater-Miller campaign poster (1964). The image of Republicans’ 1964 presidential nominee Barry Goldwater and his running mate William Miller on a blue background also appeared as a billboard with the campaign slogan “In Your Heart You Know He’s Right.”
Thanks for reading! ⭐📨