Rishi Sunak deepfakes spell trouble for Meta

Facebook has been inundated with over 100 deepfake paid advertisements impersonating Rishi Sunak and BBC newsreaders to spread disinformation. The videos have collectively been viewed by up to 400,000 people over the last month and are the first case of an extensive AI deepfake campaign using British politicians. The campaign appears to be financially rather than politically motivated, with the AI “prime minister” promoting a scam investment platform. It’s a worrying sign online platforms may struggle to cope with political AI disinformation. The videos break Meta’s content policies, and most of the advertisements were removed within a day. But the scammers, operating from accounts in 23 different countries, were able to repeatedly upload the same content and rack up thousands of views each time, overwhelming Meta’s moderation by sheer volume. A spokesperson for Meta said “We remove content that violates our policies […] less than 0.5 per cent of UK users saw any individual ad.” Over half of the UK’s population is on Facebook – 0.5 per cent of 34 million people is still enough to affect a general election.