"What the hell is this?" That was the reaction Professor Daniel Angus had when he watched an AI-generated cat video, posted to Instagram by the Labor Party.
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The Instagram reel follows an injured cat attending a medical clinic holding up a Medicare card, later reading a newspaper article with the headline Medicare at risk under Peter Dutton. It's all set to the soundtrack of Billie Eilish's What Was I Made For? sung by a cat, naturally.
It's one of several AI-generated social media posts the two major political parties have littered across Instagram and TikTok during the federal election campaign.
The Liberals have jumped on a TikTok bandwagon, repurposing Tim Cheese, an AI-generated anthropomorphic mouse that was created by another user in early 2025, for its own political videos.
If all of this sounds hard to comprehend and a little bonkers, chances are it's meant for someone else, Professor Angus, from Queensland University of Technology's Digital Media Research Centre, said.
"One of the things we always need to remind ourselves is: we are not necessarily the target audience," he said.
It's safe to assume the intended audience for these videos is those who use the platforms. For Instagram, that's predominantly people aged 25 to 34, and for TikTok, those aged 18 to 24.
With Generation Z and Millennials set to outnumber Baby Boomers for the second federal election in a row, these age cohorts are an important demographic for the two major parties.
Professor Angus said the AI videos could be an attempt to reach young voters.
"Whether this is an attempt at creating a relatable, memeable moment within the campaign, that might be a potential rationale for the cat video," he said.
For the most part, the videos are more "weird and curious" than deceptive, Professor Angus said.
"The use of AI here, they're not using it to deepfake Dutton or something like that," he said.
Professor Angus was more concerned about the spread of malformation in political campaigns, where factual information is used out of context in a misleading or harmful way.
He referenced a recent example where the Liberals reposted a snippet of an interview with Greens senator Larissa Waters without context, changing its original meaning.
Professor Angus said the media and Australia's weak advertising laws were often ineffective in countering the mistruths that come from that type of content.
What's the strategy
Former Victorian Labor staffer Reed Fleming said the two major parties look to be following a volume strategy, where they're pumping out large amounts of social media content and "seeing what sticks".
Mr Fleming led the digital operations for former premier Daniel Andrews and prior to that was a social media advisor to former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern.
"We look at all of their weird content and we think, 'What the hell are they doing?' But one in 10, or one in 100 of these [posts] might break out of your circle of most enthusiastic followers and reach people who can be persuaded," he said.
Mr Fleming, who now runs digital agency Good to Go, said it had become harder for politicians to reach voters.
"The platforms have made it harder to reach people, and become more polarised, so most of your content is going to a smaller group of people who already agree with you," he said.
Is it cutting through?
In an attention economy, anything that generates discussion is success for a political campaign, Professor Angus said.
He said the old rules of maintaining a "strict message discipline" to avoid negative attention were out.
"The new rules, which Trump certainly is using and others have used here with great effect, is that flooding of the zone," he said.
"So always being in the headlines every single day means that you dominate in that attention economy and you're the only thing that people hear about."
That saturation can ultimately influence the way people vote, Professor Angus said.
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Mr Fleming said social media was also a way for political parties to keep their base engaged and encorage them to donate and volunteer.
"But for one in 100 of these posts, they will break through and they might reach one or two million people," Mr Fleming said.
"Those are real numbers and that will be having an effect."
But reach like that can't be achieved weeks out from an election, he said.
"It has to be a really long strategy to build up your audience and to get them to absorb your message and values over time," Mr Fleming said.
Users put a premium on authenticity
A politician who understands this is independent MP Monique Ryan, who Mr Fleming said has done well to build a social media following, particularly through vertical video.
"I don't think anybody gets it as well as her and that is because she's just being herself. People on Reels and TikTok put a high premium on authenticity and she's nailing that," he said.
Mr Fleming, while acknowledging his former career as a Labor staffer, believes the Labor Party is doing a much better job of staying on message.
"They're talking about cost of living and Medicare and even through all of their weird posts, that message is still always coming through," he said.
The Liberal Party is coming across on social media as undisciplined and off message, Mr Fleming said.
"They went off on a weird tangent over the last few days on whether Anthony Albanese fell off a stage or not," he said.
