The Supreme Court of Russia has concluded its investigation into the use of artificial intelligence in political advertising, deeming its application illegal. According to the publication "Vedomosti," the court ruled that creating images of people using neural networks for campaign materials does not comply with current legislation.
The investigation was initiated after the Chelyabinsk branch of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) filed a complaint. During the election campaign for the regional legislative assembly, the party prepared a leaflet featuring characters created with the help of artificial intelligence. The regional electoral commission prohibited its release, citing a law that allows only the use of photographs of candidates or images of "undefined individuals." The generated images did not fit into either of these categories.
The legal team of the CPRF argued in their cassation appeal that the characters in the leaflet are fictional and do not correspond to real people. They presented evidence of the neural network's shortcomings, such as one of the children in the image having six fingers and anatomical distortions in the contours of a woman. However, the Supreme Court did not find these arguments convincing.
The leadership of the CPRF announced its intention to challenge this decision in the Constitutional Court after a thorough analysis of the reasoning behind the verdict.
