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Friday 22 December 2023

Fakery Fears



Fears UK not ready for deepfake general election

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has already been used to disrupt elections around the world - and there are fears among senior politicians and the security services that the UK will be next.

Former Justice Secretary Sir Robert Buckland is urging the government to do more to tackle what he sees as a "clear and present danger" to UK democracy.

The Conservative MP, who now chairs the Northern Ireland select committee, is particularly concerned about the rise of deepfakes - realistic audio and video clips of politicians appearing to say things they did not say.


Oh dear, feeding misinformation into the public arena was never supposed to be something the proles can do. Apparently it's a threat to democracy.


The threat posed to democracy by AI-generated misinformation does not belong to some dystopian vision of the future, he argues.


Yet the threat posed to democracy by officially-endorsed misinformation is dystopian part of our present reality. It has been for some time.

8 comments:

Sam Vega said...

"Former Justice Secretary Sir Robert Buckland is urging the government to do more to tackle what he sees as a "clear and present danger" to UK democracy."

Yeah, sure. How do we know it's really him?

A K Haart said...

Sam - good point, we don't know it's really him. One of the giveaways seems to be when they call themselves "Sir", because they always sound like an algorithm.

Bucko said...

What they should do is postpone any further elections until they manage to get on top of the problem. We wouldn't want anything interfering in democracy now, would we...

Tammly said...

Politicians appearing to say what they didn't say? They don't need AI for that!

DiscoveredJoys said...

I'd be more worried if all the regular announcements and manifestoes were not already deep fakes. They are tissues of lies - use them once in the run up to an election then throw them away.

Adding AI just removes some of the spinmeisters... not altogether a bad thing.

A K Haart said...

Bucko - if we know what's going on then the next step is to stop us doing anything about it.

Tammly - I think they are really worried that AI could allow anyone to check what they say and have said in the past.

DJ - yes, it can't be worse than we have now.

Doonhamer said...

Some people are already noticing that the Labour/Sir Kneel Starmer Christmas Card is a shallow fake.
Implying that his wife should know her place.

A K Haart said...

Doonhamer - I had to look that up because we didn't receive one. How creepy of him, but nice to have it confirmed.