RUMOR EFFECTS IN THE AGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: A TURN FOR THE PEOPLE?

Abstract

This article analyzes audiovisual productions created with generative Artificial Intelligences (AIs), using as a corpus the Workers' Party's "Taxação BBB" campaign and the satirical pieces from the "Brasil Sátira do Poder" profile, which circulated during the debate over the overturning of a presidential decree in 2025. The aim is to understand how these productions re-signify the notion of the rumor-effect, metaphorizing images of the people and the politician through the intertwining of political and ordinary discourses. It is argued that the technical materiality of the digital, by enabling the simulation and circulation of bodies (of the people, the politician, and the representative), not only displaces the stabilized meanings of media-political discourse but also forges an "enunciative illusion" in which the people appear to speak and occupy the same spaces as their representatives. It is concluded that this phenomenon, by daily (re)producing an "inverted" debate, creates the conditions for the emergence of "digitalized masses" and marks a definitive mutation in the rules of the game for political communication.