AI or Politician? Perceptions of Pro- And Anti-Environmental Narratives in Polish Political Discourse

The rapid development of generative artificial intelligence is increasingly influencing practices of political communication, including the formulation of programmatic and image-oriented narratives. This development raises a fundamental question about the future of democratic representation: can algorithms effectively assume the role of a political actor’s “voice,” particularly in ideologically charged domains such as environmental and climate policy? The aim of this paper is to empirically examine perceptions of authenticity and recognizability of AI-generated environmental narratives within Polish political discourse. The point of departure consists of authentic public statements made by selected candidates for the office of President of the Republic of Poland in the 2025 election, representing distinct ideological profiles. The paper presents findings from a two-stage empirical study. First, a corpus of authentic candidate statements concerning ecology, climate, and energy policy was constructed. On the basis of this corpus, large language models (LLMs) subsequently generated a set of analogous political messages, including short social media posts as well as more formal, programmatic statements. Second, focus group research was conducted in which voters evaluated the presented texts in terms of authorship—assessing whether the messages were produced by a human actor (a specific candidate) or by artificial intelligence—and subjected them to cognitive evaluation, including perceptions of authenticity, credibility, and sincerity of the message. In line with the study’s assumptions, the research tested the hypothesis that environmental narratives generated by large language models are perceived by voters as equally authentic and credible as analogous statements produced by real political candidates, and that their authorship is not unequivocally recognizable. The findings contribute to research on authenticity in political communication as well as to the growing literature on the role of artificial intelligence in political communication related to environmental issues in Poland and Central and Eastern Europe. The paper also offers reflections on the risk of normalization of AI-generated environmental narratives under conditions of intense political polarization, which currently characterizes the Polish political landscape.