2 ms·

Deepfakes can be dangerous, but they won't harm our elections

• jfengel 2y ago
  The "our elections" in the headline means "the upcoming UK election". Not elections elsewhere, not future elections. The article calls out the US 2016 election as an example of election interference by digital propaganda (albeit not by deepfakes). The article is aimed at a specific thing: trying to tamp down claims of election interference in this specific election, on the grounds that those claims could cause problems bigger than the actual deepfakes, for which there is no evidence yet. It is not trying to claim that deepfakes won't mess up other elections, of which there are many this year. Even in that limited scope of the article, I think he's overstating the case. The article cites deepfakes that are already circulating, but says that they're not good enough to fool anybody. That would be a deeply dubious claim in a year with a closer election. It just so happens that the UK election is expected to be a historic landslide. Even a late, incredibly convincing fake isn't going to radically alter the outcome. Don't count on that for the next UK election. And especially don't count on it for the US election, which is going to be incredibly close (both for the chief executive and for the balance in the legislature). "The deepfakes aren't good enough to fool people" is a wildly insufficient argument.