Spain's main opposition party posts a deepfake campaign video of the prime minister's wife and allies 'admitting' wrongdoing
Spain's conservative People's Party (PP) launched a campaign video across its official social media channels in the week of Oct 19 that uses AI-manipulated likenesses of people linked to Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's Socialist party, among them his wife Begoña Gómez and former prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, appearing to admit to acts such as soliciting prostitutes and taking kickbacks, per the Guardian (Oct 23-24) and El País. The video carries an AI label in tiny, nearly transparent lettering and had nearly 2 million views by Oct 23. Digital transformation minister Óscar López called it 'a colossal lie'; Leire Díez, a former Socialist party member whose likeness was used, filed a court complaint on Oct 23 for defamation and digital identity theft and demanded the ad be withdrawn. Most of nine legal experts consulted by El País said the labelled, satirical video is probably not illegal. The PP's Borja Sémper says there was no intent to make people believe the characters were real. Spain votes on Nov 29.
Damage
Deepfaked statements attributed to named real people, viewed nearly 2 million times during an election campaign; one criminal complaint filed
In their words
“It's telling people a colossal lie, and for a party to do it on its official accounts seems intolerable to me.”
“If there had been malicious intent to make people believe that the characters who appear there are real, then we'd have a problem.”
Sources
The Guardian. Dated to the week the video launched ('this week', per the Guardian's Oct 23 report); disclosed by El País on Oct 22. Novelty 2: an official party account, not an anonymous actor, using deepfakes of named opponents is an escalation of a known pattern. Whether the complaint succeeds is open.
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