We taught AI to spot the most used props this election

The novelty cheque has long been a mainstay of the political “photo op” but a Guardian Australia analysis of photos posted during the 2022 and 2019 election campaigns suggests giant cheques are on the way out, while hi-vis workwear and photos of dogs are on the rise.

During our work building the automated systems behind the pork-o-meter, which tracks election campaign pork barrelling as it occurs, the Guardian’s data team found ourselves asking an important question. Could we teach a robot to spot photos of novelty cheques?

We were already using machine learning to flag text from politicians’ Facebook posts as likely grant announcements and election promises, but having another model in place to find big cheques and certificates in photos might pick up things we’d missed in the text.

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