“Wait, did I see correctly? Is Taylor Swift really supporting Donald Trump in the upcoming 2024 US presidential elections? That does not seem right”
If you woke up to this news on your social media and felt confused, don’t worry, you have just fallen into the trap of deepfakes, and you are definitely not alone.
It wasn’t long ago that Cambridge Analytica took the personal data of millions of Facebook users without their consent to use them for political advertising purposes, influencing the result of the 2016 US presidential elections[1]. Today, technology is again being turned against voters to manipulate them and affect electoral results. With AI-generated deepfakes, people can create compromising videos, images, or audio of anything and anyone, including persons of influence, to make them do or say anything they decide, and you will not always be able to distinguish between what is real and what isn’t. The Taylor Swift case was not isolated. Earlier this summer a deepfake of Democratic nominee Kamala Harris’s voice making provocative statements on delicate political issues was released reaching over 150 million views[2]. Similarly, fake AI-generated pictures of Donald Trump with Jeffrey Epstein have become viral[3]. Many other examples are out there in which either candidate is being targeted, or false election dates and general information are altered. With the widespread use of Generative AI, virtually everyone, including voters, can create deepfakes, spreading false information to affect other people’s decisions and challenging electoral integrity.
You would think that you as well as other average people would be immune to this and that you have the tools to detect when content is fake. Well, it is not that easy, as the AI technology behind the generation of deepfakes is being refined every day, making the content extremely accurate. CBS Boston’s I-Team made an experiment showing people a deepfake video in which one of their reporters was making a speech that was actually given by the Massachusetts Governor. The results of the polls were shocking, with more than half the people surveyed not being able to recognize that the video was fake.
While different states are regulating the use of AI-generated fakes differently, Federal laws restricting the use of deepfake, especially for elections, are still in the making. In Texas, for instance, the use of deepfakes is considered a criminal offense, however, in other states, regulations are either less strict or non-existent. In the meantime, as voters, we have to remember to always check and recheck facts and be skeptical and critical about what we see and spread on social media, and the potential results of a misuse of AI technology. Ironically, AI can also come into help when trying to detect deepfakes.
As the first AI-disinformation-fed elections in history are approaching, the threat of deepfakes needs to be addressed, especially in the light of future elections, educating voters to spot what is real and what isn’t, but also through unified and strict regulations condemning the generation of this content.
What is your opinion on the subject? Do you think deepfakes will really influence the results of the upcoming elections? Do you think earlier actions in developing Federal regulations could have mitigated this phenomenon?
[1] Graham-Harrison, E., & Cadwalladr, C. (2021, September 29). Revealed: 50 million Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election
[2] Tenbarge, K. (2024, August 2). Bipartisan effort targets deceptive political AI deepfakes [Video]. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/misinformation/kamala-harris-deepfake-shared-musk-sparks-free-speech-debate-rcna164119
[3] Sayegh, E. (2024, May 28). The Battle for Truth in election seasons: AI-Generated Deepfakes. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilsayegh/2024/05/14/the-battle-for-truth-in-election-seasons-ai-generated-deepfakes/
A very interesting and important topic Alice! The fact that AI-generated deepfakes can manipulate such influential figures and spread misinformation at scale is worrisome. I agree that deepfakes to an extent could have a serious impact on this years elections if not properly regulated. This goes mostly for the older generation that make up for majority of US voters. This demographic may be less likely to understand the concept of deepfakes and take such misinformation that is so seemingly real to be true.
This issue isn’t just confined to the US. In Europe, there have been cases as like a recent deepfake video of the Ukrainian President supposedly calling for his troops to surrender, which was widely circulated online. Fortunately, social media platforms quickly flagged it, but it shows how dangerous deepfakes can be in influencing political narratives globally.
Educating the public is crucial, but I also think stricter federal regulations should have been implemented much earlier to combat the risk.