Lisa Magnusson: The New Political Trend Is Not Just Frightening, but Above All Shabby

A beautiful young woman sits in a changing room, speaking to her mother on the phone. Outside, an aggressive masked immigrant man waits in the autumn darkness. A road closure delays the mother’s frantic attempt to reach her daughter, who disappears into a Malmö underpass. Bombastic strings build as the threat closes in.

That is the plot of an AI-generated election film intended to make viewers vote for the Sweden Democrats. Lisa Magnusson does not describe it as merely frightening. Her judgment is harsher: the new political trend is shabby.

Sweden’s 2026 election was expected to become the country’s first AI election, and Magnusson points to examples across the political field. The Social Democrats angered members by using AI to call them and urge them to demonstrate on May 1. The Moderates produced a criticized Reagan pastiche saturated with AI imagery. The Sweden Democrats released the threatening film.

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It began with them taking our cash, then they took our weapons, and finally they took our leaders. We are done with Sweden.

The Moderate Youth League, Muf, also posted an AI-generated image showing a hand holding a phone with a text message supposedly written by a gang criminal: “It began with them taking our cash, then they took our weapons, and finally they took our leaders. We are done with Sweden.” The wording came from a Svenska Dagbladet report in which several sources said police had become increasingly successful. Muf’s presentation, Magnusson argues, made it look like a real message specifically about Moderate policy.

Magnusson invokes the “uncanny valley,” the theory that people may be drawn to increasingly humanlike robots until a point where the resemblance becomes disturbing. “That is how AI feels now: We are standing in the uncanny valley,” she writes as the campaign’s synthetic realism turns from persuasive to unsettling.

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That is how AI feels now: We are standing in the uncanny valley.