The Rise of Political Deepfakes: A New Threat to Democracy
While once deepfake technologies were on the fringe of AI developments, they have remained more recently in public consciousness and found its use in entertainment, promotion, and with greater fruitfulness – in politics. Deepfakes are very realistic fakes created with the help of artificial intelligence that can change pictures, videos or even audio to make the persons in the picture/basically real things appear as if they were doing something, which they never did. These concerns emerge as this technology gains more popularity and sophistication, particularly in politics, which is the area under consideration in this paper.
What Are Deepfakes?
The term “deepfake” is the combination of the words “deep learning” and “fake”. Deep learning is one of machine learning applications that allows the AI agents to act like humans and perform human actions like talking, waving their faces or body. They can produce synthetic media that passes when tested against real video or audio clips that are too many to be tested.
Starting as funny videos or memes and effects, deepfakes have multiplied into the vicious instruments widely used for political manipulations. It is possible to fake video footage of some leaders, using the technology in deepfakes, which one can use in manipulating people, creating divisions among the voters, and political instability.
Political Deepfakes in Action
Manipulations of voices and images by artificial intelligence have already entered the area of politics – through deep fakes. That year was 2018 when the video leaked; the video that witnesses the then America President Obama addressing the now ex-president Trump as a ‘total and complete dipshit’. The video though, was a fake created by filmmaker Jordan Peele to show how realistic the fake and how dangerous the media can be. Though this also was an opportunity to teach, as well as very open, this was also one of the best examples of how it can be misused.
Political deepfakes have been used in different disinformation campaigns in India, Myanmar and the US in recent years during election or civil unrest. For example, a political party in India had released a fake video in different languages of a regional politician in 2020. Even if the motive was to involve the campaign, an avenue that is unethical was created.
The Threat to Democratic Institutions
It is a process which entails information which is obtained in the process of informing the citizens on various issues in the country. Deepfakes threaten this foundation, in the following ways:
Erosion of Trust: In politics, even a few minutes of a fake video can change the mind of the viewer to vote. Worse, the presence of deepfakes allows bad people to deny the real news is real, that is, further confuse the audience.
Disinformation at Scale: In contrast to the traditional propaganda, that requires funding and organization of dissemination, deepfakes can be created cheaply and deployed instantly. This trait makes them ideal for foreign influence peddling and domestic manipulation so ever.
Voter Manipulation: Malicious deepfakes may be targeted in an attempt to increase division within a certain group, depress the voters’ turnout or propoganda with a particular narrative. This may help to influence the election without the obvious signs of manipulation.
Undermining Journalistic Integrity: When one uses deepfakes as a legitimate news article, it becomes a threat to the fourth estate. Even reasonable newspapers and magazines may spread rumors and myths thus making public more doubtful.
Detection and Defense
The increase of deepfakes lately has made people try to find ways of detecting them. Microsoft, Google and Facebook are among the tech billionaires that have adopted measures of detecting manipulated media. Similarly, researchers are coming up with AI that can decode deepfakes artifacts such as lights, blinking or audio modulation, among many others.
However, there are detection tools which are generally not as advanced as the creation tools.
Deepfake technology is developing further, and sometimes even a quality fake is not always identifiable using existing technologies. But, the absence of public consciousness is still a problem. Such viewers then who are from the low literacy, low-technology areas or regions may not decipher between fake news and real news or even question the genuineness of the fake news.
Regulatory and Policy Challenges
Governments around the world are beginning to catch on. California and Texas are among the US states who have passed laws that will check the use of deepfakes in political campaigns. The EU is trying to control the spread of manipulated media through the Digital Services Act.
But enforcing it is very difficult, when the content emanates from regions where there are no laws or the laws are relatively lax. Besides, the moderation of deepfakes may be a violation of the freedom of expression and imagination thus giving rise to more questions on ethics and law.
A Path Forward
To respond to political deepfakes examples, we need to take actions at three levels:
Public Education: Inadequate knowledge of deepfake existence and recognizing them should be enhanced. Media literacy should be one of the important components of citizenship education.
Cross-Sector Collaboration: Skeptics argue deepfake technology is a powerful weapon in the hands of an evil state or even some corporations and that is the reason why governments, tech companies, academic institutions and civil society must ensure democracy is impervious to them.
Transparency and Verification: Socially responsible sources and platforms must use the technologies such as digital signatures, blockchains, and content authentication to ensure the media’s legitimacy.
Ethical AI Development: Generative AI tools – it is long past time that developers came up with guidelines that would be useful in minimizing misuse of the tools and get the culprits to book.
Conclusion
The incidents on a political deepfake are not a technological experiment, but a concrete threat to the countries which are democratic right now. Given the threat that democracy internationally is facing from electoral interference by digital technologies, there is a need for a global campaign in order to support truth and integrity in electoral processes.
