AI Deepfakes and Electoral Misinformation ‘Inevitable,’ Electoral Commission CEO Warns

In a stark warning about the future of Irish elections, the head of Ireland’s electoral commission has declared that deepfake AI videos targeting politicians will “inevitably” emerge in coming years, posing significant threats to electoral integrity.

An Coimisiún Toghcháin Chief Executive Art O’Leary expressed serious concerns following a recent incident involving a fabricated video of President Catherine Connolly that falsely depicted her withdrawing from the election just days before voters went to the polls.

“It’s the first time we had seen a sophisticated, deep fake,” O’Leary stated. “Most of the efforts up to now have been ham-fisted or amusing.”

The electoral commission chief emphasized that disinformation and deepfakes consistently top the agenda in his discussions with international counterparts. “The potential here is off the charts,” he noted, highlighting the rapidly evolving challenges that artificial intelligence poses to electoral processes worldwide.

O’Leary believes that digital literacy represents the most effective long-term solution. “We need to educate people in relation to the material that they find online,” he said. “This stuff is happening so quickly in such volumes now, and it’s hard to tell whether something is true or not. I described it as like Whack a Mole.”

The scale of the problem makes regulation particularly challenging, according to O’Leary. “It is possible, with an army of chatbots that we simply become overwhelmed. And that’s where the difficulty is with trying to regulate or hold the social media companies to account,” he explained. “If thousands of these things are appearing in minutes or hours, it’s trying to keep track of all of them.”

In the recent incident involving President Connolly, Meta suspended the account that shared the fabricated video, but not before it had been widely viewed and shared. Connolly subsequently filed a formal complaint with the Electoral Commission, describing the deepfake as “malicious” and a “disgraceful attempt to mislead voters and undermine our democracy.”

The commission maintains “whitelist” channels with major social media platforms that provide priority access for reporting electoral concerns. This arrangement allowed them to quickly escalate the Connolly deepfake to Meta. “It does show what can happen when there is an obvious case,” O’Leary said, while acknowledging that “some cases aren’t as immediately obvious, or maybe some of the social media companies won’t be as cooperative.”

Beyond deepfakes, O’Leary also discussed other electoral issues, including the recent “spoil the vote” campaign. A comprehensive report analyzing voting patterns and motivations in the presidential election is expected in early 2023, which will shed light on why voters made their choices, including ballot spoilage.

“I know there are many people who felt that they would have liked an additional candidate on the ballot paper,” O’Leary noted. “I saw thousands of spoiled votes. I was in a number of count centres on the count day, on October 25. And I saw Maria Steen’s name, I saw Paul Mescal’s name, Conor McGregor’s name, ‘None of the above’, ‘you’re all corrupt’.”

The electoral chief also addressed the illegal practice of voters photographing and posting their spoiled ballots online. “People are not supposed to take photographs of ballot papers, because the privacy of the vote, and it’s supposed to be very personal to you. It’s a secret ballot,” he emphasized. “It’s not something we encourage.”

The concerns raised by O’Leary come amid growing international awareness about AI’s potential to disrupt democratic processes. As technology continues to advance, electoral authorities worldwide are grappling with how to maintain the integrity of voting systems while countering increasingly sophisticated disinformation techniques.

Ireland’s electoral commission is now positioned at the forefront of this global challenge, working to develop mechanisms that can identify and counteract deepfakes before they significantly impact public discourse or electoral outcomes.