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This is a fictitious article, written in January 2024, about how the UK's next election could be disrupted by deepfakes.
16:05 Friday 15th November 2024, London, UK
Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash
The term unprecedented has been used a lot in the past decade of politics, but the past 48 hours, including yesterday’s general election, have been like nothing that the UK has seen before. As the hours pass there is mounting evidence that the British election has won the unenviable award of being the first major election to be severely interfered with by foreign state actors.
Starting with the facts: Against all the odds the Conservatives have won most seats, 315, enough to form a minority government. For the past four hours Rishi Sunak has been in a meeting with King Charles. In an extraordinary move they were joined an hour later by Sir Keir Starmer and Rob Vincent, Interim Chief Executive of the Electrical Commission. There is no word about what is being discussed, however some sources claim that the election will have to be re-run.
There is a heavy police presence outside the Houses of Parliament, with ugly scenes as thousands have turned up to an impromptu protest about the results. There have been similar pockets of civil unrest in many other major cities.
Two days ago everyone, bar the most optimistic Tories, were expecting a modest Labour victory. The opinion polls had predicted Labour would have anywhere between 320 and 380 seats, with big gains for the Liberal Democrats, and huge losses for the Conservative party and the SNP.
Stories from multiple sources started circulating on social media late Wednesday afternoon, saying that Keir Starmer has a secret pact with Jeremy Corbyn. The pact dates back to just after Sir Keir was elected Labour Leader. If Labour won the election they would enact many of Corbyn’s policies that formed his failed 2019 election manifesto. The story was backed up with 14 “leaked” videos. Ten of which were hidden camera videos that showed both Starmer and Corbyn secretly meeting in hotels around the UK. The dates and locations correlating with times that showed both Starmer and Corbyn were in the same place. The remaining 4 looked like they’d been discreetly filmed with a phone and showed Starmer in a car talking with his aides about the pact and how to keep it secret.
Within hours of the story surfacing, X (formally Twitter), Facebook and other social media sites were awash with what looked like genuine news clips from BBC, Sky News and GB news, all discussing the Starmer/Corbyn pact. One “BBC clip” was shared over 17 million times on X before it was finally removed at 4PM on Thursday. There are also a number of fake clones of news websites including The Daily Mail online, Times, and BBC, all of which carried fake election coverage interspersed with genuine news articles.
Of course the story, the videos, and the news clips were all very convincing deepfakes. Many voted assuming the story was real, and only later discovered it to be a hoax. In a snap poll, commissioned by YouGov, 18% of people still believe the story is genuine.
To further add credibility to the story, a number of videos debunking the pact were also circulated; these were obvious fakes, they contained glitches or were very unconvincing.
Susan Summers, 56, who lives in the “Red Wall” seat of Workington, had voted Conservative in 2019. Having been unimpressed with Sunak she was going to return to Labour. When she heard about the Corbyn pact she changed her mind last minute. “My vote will never go to a party where that terrible man has any say.” explained Susan. Many others felt the same and the "Red Wall" largely remained blue.
Duncan O’Brien, 32, was torn between Green and Labour. “My heart wanted Green, but my head said only Labour can get rid of the Tories. I was all set to vote Labour, but then I saw the pact story on Instagram. I thought it was fake, so I followed the link through to what I thought was the BBC website. It looked genuine, I even went to the sports pages afterward and all the rugby scores were correct, so I assumed I was on the real BBC site. I’m not a fan of Corbyn, so I voted Green in the end”. The Bristol seat switched from Labour to Green.
Up and down the UK there are similar stories, all of which have benefited the Tories in some way. A spokesperson for the Conservative party categorically denied any involvement. The claim is backed up by Lindy Cameron, Head of the National Cyber Security Centre. “Our initial analysis is that this is a well planned and sophisticated attack by a foreign state.” Explained Ms Cameron, “However, we need to do a more thorough investigation before saying more.”
Professor Anne Thompson of UCL, who specialises in British politics, looked visibly shaken whilst giving her analysis. “This is a watershed moment for democracy, not just here in Britain, but for the whole world. This is the first time that a hostile government has obviously and successfully ruined an election. When what has happened today starts to sink in, people will be scared; many will have no idea what or who to believe and trust anymore. I’m not sure how in the short term, or perhaps ever, we’ll be able to run an election where the majority of the country trusts the outcome. This could be the first step to complete societal breakdown.”
The atmosphere here at Westminster is one of deep unease and considerable fear. Today might be the day that the AI and deepfake doomsayers are proved right.
Britain, and indeed the whole world, watches on at events here, holding its breath and hoping for the best.
This article was written in January 2024. Labour were leading the Conservatives by around 15 to 20 points.
In order for something like this to happen 4 things are required:
Let’s look at each in turn:
We probably already have good enough deepfakes. e.g. google the deepfake Martin Lewis (Money Saving Expert). Faking news-readers is relatively easy for 2 reasons. Firstly there are hundreds of hours of footage available to train the deepfake algorithms. Secondly, news-readers mainly either sit or stand, it is only their face and hand gestures that need faking; it’s much easier than faking someone moving around.
We’re potentially 10 months off from an election. Tech moves fast, and in that time deepfakes will improve immensely.
The recording of the Starmer and Corbyn meetings and Starmer discussing the plan with his aides was supposedly captured covertly. Nobody expects high quality video from hidden cameras, in fact poor sound and image quality would add to the believability, as well as being easier to fake.
Flooding social media with obvious deepfakes is an important part of the deception; it makes people believe that they can spot fakes. Having poor quality deepfakes saying that the pact is untrue adds credibility to the high quality, believable, deepfakes that suggest the pact is real.
The weakest part of this story is the Starmer/Corbyn pact. Many would disregard it as nonsense. However, consider these points:
It is easy to set up hundreds of websites with web addresses that look similar to real ones. Many people might not even look at the address too closely. Just look at the number of people who, unfortunately, get scammed by websites claiming to be their banks.
Automatically updating the fake websites with real news items and substituting the election news is easy for any semi competent software developer.
At the time of writing a one-minute search throws up the following web addresses that are free to purchase:
And there are many more along those lines.
The only way for this to work is careful timing. The story needs to be widely enough circulated ahead of the election to alter how people vote. It also needs to be close enough to the election so there is not enough time for politicians and genuine media to react and debunk.
A large co-ordinated number of social media accounts over many platforms is the only way this can be achieved. This is why it is only a foreign state with an axe to grind, rather than bedroom hackers, that can pull this off. The networks need to be grown over several months if not years. The accounts in this network will look like any other: perhaps talking about hobbies or a jobs. The key thing is they build credibility with their followers. Maybe someone you’re following on Twitter is not someone you think they are? When many accounts, all with high levels of social proof in their network, start sharing stories it seems more believable, enough to gain traction and go viral. Just like kindling in a fire, if it is well-placed and lit at the same time, the fire talks hold.
© Dave Liddament, 2024