In the 2019 federal election, he ran to represent the Division of Boothby as a member of the far-right Fraser Anning's Conservative National Party.

[16] In 2016, Cheok and student Emma Yang Zhang co-created Kissenger, a device which allows people to remotely transmit the physical sensation of kissing.

At the time, the school was asking for donations but did not yet have any physical address and was not registered with the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency.

After the conference the organisers issued a formal statement censuring Cheok for his behaviour after he personally attacked an academic on Twitter when she criticised aspects of his presentation.

[21] Cheok responded by inviting Steve Bannon to give that year's keynote speech, prompting widespread international criticism from universities.

[21] At the 2019 Australian federal election, he ran as a candidate for Anning's Conservative National Party in the Adelaide division of Boothby,[4] receiving 0.79% of the vote.

[41] In the 2019 Queen's Birthday Honours, he was made a Member (AM) of the Order of Australia for his work in the fields of robotics and artificial intelligence.

[21] This resulted in a formal request by the Australian chapter of the Digital Games Research Association to the Governor-General of Australia, for it to be withdrawn.