Could it be true?
Every day between now and the election, Tortoise's Alexi Mostrous will examine a claim from the campaign trail. Some will be outlandish, some believable. Some might even be true.
In an effort to bond with Gen Z voters, the main party leaders have recorded themselves playing Minecraft, a popular online adventure game. Nigel Farage blows up Rishi Sunak’s house using TNT and calling himself “the one and only Big Chungus”. Sunak kills a chicken with a chainsaw. Keir Starmer installs a trapdoor in Farage’s online pub. The videos were convincing enough to be mentioned on BBC’s Newsnight. They’re also 100 per cent fake, examples of “deepfake” technology which can easily manipulate voices and mannerisms. Such examples remind us that, if only in the context of the UK election cycle, deepfakes are more often used to create memes than misinformation. That’s not the case in every country. In India, police arrested at least nine people in April for making deepfake videos criticising PM Narendra Modi, and authorities there have warned that AI lies could lead to unrest.
