A political ad from Spain’s main opposition party that used a deepfake video of the prime minister’s wife has sparked outrage and set off a wider debate on AI, as the deeply polarised country gears up for general elections next month. Launched this week across the social media channels of the conservative People’s party (PP), the video used artificial intelligence to manipulate the likenesses of various people linked to Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist party and appeared to show them admitting to acts such as soliciting prostitutes and taking kickbacks. An AI-generated version of Sánchez’s wife, Begoña Gómez, for example, speaks about receiving a university post thanks to her husband’s job, while a deepfake of the former Socialist president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero speaks about hiding jewellery in a safe.
Both lines are nods to ongoing investigations in which Gómez and Zapatero have denied any wrongdoing. The Socialist party was swift to respond to the video, which by Friday had racked up nearly 2m views. While the video noted at the bottom – in tiny, nearly transparent font – that it had been created with AI, López pointed to the wider risk.
In a court complaint, Leire Díez, a former Socialist party member, reportedly accused the PP of defamation and digital identity theft, after the video used her likeness to hint at accusations that she worked to undermine judicial and law enforcement in order to help the Socialists. A majority of the nine legal experts consulted by the newspaper El País concurred that what the PP had done was not illegal, given that the video was labelled as AI-generated and that the overall tone was one of political satire. But the legality of the video was just one aspect, said Juan Antonio Lascuraín, a professor of criminal law at the Autonomous University of Madrid.
He pointed to the wider backdrop of the election campaign, in which both mainstream parties have sought to rally voters by stoking emotions and attacking the morality of their rivals, but he said the video was a “red line” in terms of how campaigns normally unfolded. The use of AI to generate or enhance political ads has also become a talking point in the US ahead of next month’s midterm elections. A recent report by a research group based at Wesleyan University in Connecticut identified more than 200 such ads, the vast majority of them tied to the Republicans.
Much of the AI use is not disclosed through any type of disclaimer.” In Spain, the PP has brushed off criticism.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
