Matthew Larsen

0:00 Heather du Plessis-Allan.

0:02 So the question today is whether the Taxpayers’ Union have gone too far with their AI advert about Chris Hipkins.

0:07 Now, if you haven't seen this ad yet, let me explain it to you.

0:11 The video starts, a short video, but it starts with a man, a ginger-haired man in a suit and a red tie,

0:18 running full tilt down a suburban street.

0:21 He kicks in a door. Inside the house is a family having dinner.

0:24 He runs up to them and he takes all their wallets off the table and then runs off.

0:27 And then he kicks in the door of another house. A woman is watching telly in there.

0:31 He runs up, takes her wallet, bolts it out the door.

0:33 Then he takes a wallet at a reno site and then he takes all the money lying on a table at a barbecue.

0:38 And then he runs out back onto the street to a clapped-out red Toyota, gets in, looks in the rearview mirror and it's Chippy.

0:46 And then the ad says, We Can't Afford Labour.

0:48 Now, as you can imagine, commentators on the left are absolutely losing their minds over this ad.

0:54 Hipkins has called it nasty and desperate and he says it's showing how out of touch the rich boys who run the Taxpayers’ Union are.

1:01 Frankly, I think it's brilliant. I think it's a brilliant ad.

1:05 I saw this ad weeks ago, funnily enough, before the Taxpayers’ Union released it.

1:10 I thought it was very, very funny the first time I saw it.

1:12 It doesn't cross ethical lines at all.

1:15 No one will think it really is Hipkins.

1:17 Not just because the AI actor doesn't actually look like Hipkins, but because the behaviour is just so bloody outrageous.

1:23 There's no way this is actually Chris Hipkins doing it.

1:26 You'd have to be an idiot to think that this is real.

1:29 The use of AI also is perfectly acceptable.

1:33 And in fact, political parties would be idiots not to use something this cheap and this effective.

1:38 And that, I think, is the key thing here.

1:40 This is the most effective attack ad on Labour yet.

1:43 This is a thousand times more effective than every single one of the National MPs going “nine new taxes” on some kind of 1995 strategy in the hope that someone is going to take their false claim seriously.

1:57 This ad takes an idea that Chippy is after your money, which you know is true, and then exaggerates it to the point of being funny.

2:06 But because it's funny and because it's visual, it sticks.

2:10 Now, you might not like the Taxpayers’ Union.

2:12 And you might not like their politics.

2:14 You might not like their strategies.

2:16 But you have got to admit that they are some of the best in the business at campaigning and making a political point with a little bit of humour.

2:23 My advice to Chippy would be stop talking about the ad, mate, because you are only drawing attention to something that thousands of people are now going to want to see and they're going to remember because it's quite funny.

0:00 Did you find that AI ad of Chippy funny? That was hilarious, though, wasn't it? Wasn't that brilliant?

0:04 I found it, yes, fascinating. And if people looked at the ad at the start, they will have seen that it was an AI ad.

0:14 It was fictional. That's what it said. It was quite honest and upfront, but it was brilliant.

0:21 And it cost, apparently, 200 bucks to make.

0:26 Amazing, eh?

0:27 You know, and they say that if you were making it from scratch, it would cost well into six figures because you'd have to hire actors and what have you.

0:37 The really, I guess, determining feature of whether it was [unclear] Chippy or not, was the rear vision mirror and the fact that he climbed into the passenger door of the car and ended up driving away in the car.

0:54 Oh, yeah, there is no, I mean, there were AI mistakes all over the show.

0:58 When I watched it a second time, I realised it, like, he's running in the day, then he bursts into the house and looks like they're having dinner at night time.

1:05 Yes, exactly.

1:05 And then he's out again and it's daytime and then he runs to the wrong side of the vehicle because it's an American video.

1:10 And then drives off.

1:11 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:13 And it drives off on the right side of the vehicle for us.

1:16 But when he looks in the rear vision mirror...

1:18 Ethically, any problems?

1:19 It's not him.

1:20 It's a youthful Chippy.

1:23 No, I don't see any great problems.

1:25 You can't take something like that seriously.

1:27 Neither.

1:27 We're going to...