Conservative politicians tend to look happier and more attractive in photos than liberal politicians, according to a new artificial intelligence study conducted in Denmark.
Published in the magazine Scientific Reportsowned by Nature, in March, research found that AI can predict a person’s political ideology with 61% accuracy, analyzing just one headshot.
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Scientists entered nearly 3,200 publicly uploaded photos of political candidates running in the 2017 Danish municipal elections into Microsoft Azure’s Face API tool to assess the person’s emotional state.
The analysis found that 80% of faces displayed a happy expression, while 19% were read as neutral.
“For women (though not men), high attractiveness scores were found among those the model identified as likely to be conservative,” read the results. “These results are credible, as previous research using human raters has also highlighted a link between attractiveness and conservatism.”
The results were even more accurate for men, 65%, before the researchers took their pictures of visual images beyond the man’s face – such as shirt collars.
Leftist politicians showed more neutral and less happy faces than their conservative counterparts, the study found.
“Attractiveness was not the only correlate of ideology predicted by the model,” the scientists explained. “We also found that expressing happiness is associated with conservatism for both sexes.
“Previous work has found that smiling in photographs is a valid indicator of extroversion,” they continued. “And while extroversion is not widely associated with ideology, some studies have found that right-wing politicians are more extroverted.”
The scientists noted that “as attractiveness generally aids electoral success, all candidates are encouraged to provide an attractive photograph.”
“Left and right-wing politicians may have different incentives to smile – for example, smiling faces seem more attractive, which is comparatively important for conservative politicians,” says the paper.
“Future work is needed to explore the extent to which happy faces are indicative of conservatism outside of sample politicians.”
Of greater concern is the “threat to privacy posed by deep learning approaches” using publicly available data.
This isn’t the first time AI has raised red flags.
In March, Facebook removed AI-generated deepfake social media ads that used actresses Scarlett Johansson and Emma Watson.
And a recent report found that generative AI will cause significant disruptions to jobs held by “higher-paying knowledge workers” whose roles were “previously considered relatively immune to automation.”
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