The field of artificial intelligence has experienced massive growth in the last few years and it seems to be getting bigger and better by the minute.

With the help of AI technologies, we can create visually stunning images from prompts, produce music beats and lyrics, easily translate languages, and even generate custom resumes for job applications.

We can use AI to create or manipulate audio and video and make people say things they never said or do things they haven’t done in real life.

These false images, videos, or audio clips are known as deepfakes because they’re made using a “deep” learning algorithm.

Although deepfakes are more commonly used for entertainment purposes like digital renderings of celebrities or swapping out actors in movies, there have been a few cases where they have been used for political reasons.

This post is going to examine some of the best and most recent examples of deepfakes in politics that demonstrate how powerful and influential AI can be.

Notable Examples of Deepfakes in Politics

1. Donald Trump

Source: CTV News

Donald Trump has been at the center of multiple instances of deepfake content as both the victim and the perpetrator.

In June, Trump was featured in a campaign ad video released by Ron DeSantis, in which he appeared to be hugging and kissing Anthony Fauci on the cheek.

Fauci is a controversial figure for many U.S conservatives so the campaign video, which quickly went viral, earned Trump criticisms from supporters of the Republican party.

Although half of the images in the ad with Trump and Fauci were later proven to be AI-generated, the damage, as they say, had already been done.

In another campaign ad by a group backing Governor Ron DeSantis for the 2024 presidential run, a recording purported to be Trump’s voice is heard criticizing Iowa’s governor, Kim Reynolds.

In truth, Trump tweeted about Kim Reynolds using those same words but he never uttered them out loud. So, even though the voice in the recording sounded convincingly like Trump’s, it was a deepfake meant to distort public opinion.

2. Elizabeth Warren

Source: Elizabeth Warren

“Allowing Republicans to vote could threaten the integrity of an election and the safety of the electorate.” This statement was supposedly made by Elizabeth in a video posted online.

As you can imagine, the video quickly went viral, inviting criticisms and comments from all across social media and the American political landscape.

The video seemed very convincing, so many people took it as fact until it was debunked as untrue by Poynter Institute’s fact-checking nonprofit, PolitiFact.

Upon analysis, the video was revealed as a deepfake based on an interview Warren had with MSNBC on Dec 14, 2022.

In the original video, Warren mentions how Republicans have made badmouthing the government a regular practice and how Democrats were proving that the government can be on the people’s side.

However, at no point does Warren say that Republicans should not be allowed to vote as the manipulated footage of the interview falsely declares.

3. Ron DeSantis

Source: Fox13 News

Florida Gov Ron DeSantis doesn’t just share deepfake content of other people, he has also been an unwitting star of several manipulated media that’s been distributed online.

One example is a deepfake recording of a Twitter Space with DeSantis and Elon Musk that was posted on Instagram by former president, Donald Trump.

The video featured other characters like Hitler, the devil, and George Soros, while the audio had AI-generated voices mimicking DeSantis and Musk.

Towards the end of the recording, a voice sounding convincingly like Trump’s comments, “Ron DeSanctimonious can kiss my big, beautiful 2024 presidential a—.”

This inappropriate recording became wildly popular, receiving millions of views and over 369,000 likes on Instagram alone.

DeSantis also appeared in another deepfake video shared by Donald Trump Jr. on Twitter. This time around, DeSantis’ face was imposed on Michael Scott’s face in a scene from the acclaimed TV show, The Office.

In the scene, DeSantis’ character is being made fun of because he accidentally wore a woman’s suit to work. The joke seems to be that DeSantis is kind of a woman for wearing shoes with heels, and somehow that is insulting.

4. Nancy Pelosi

Source: NBC News

In 2020, during Nancy Pelosi’s term as a speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, a video surfaced online in which she appeared to be drunk and was slurring her words as a result.

The video was shared widely and soon found its way to different social media platforms. Naturally, people who presumed the clip was real expressed disbelief and displeasure at Pelosi’s actions.

In truth, the video was doctored to mislead the public and paint Pelosi in a negative light. The fake video was taken from a real video of Pelosi at a news conference months earlier, where she’s taken sips of water before addressing the audience.

The original video was slowed down and distorted to make the congresswoman sound intoxicated and incoherent. The video was viewed and reshared thousands of times before it got taken down.

5. Joe Biden

Source: The White House

The president of the United States is a regular flyer in the land of deepfakes. Many social media users have made harmless shitposts using AI-generated tools to imitate Biden’s voice and make him say all kinds of ridiculous things.

In one instance, Biden can be heard explaining how he prefers smoking inferior strains of weed rather than high-grade ones.

In another audio clip posted on Twitter, Biden goes on a philosophical rant about Young Sheldon and the brilliance of Sheldon Cooper’s character.

One Twitter user created a clip of President Biden complaining about the similarities he shares with the characters in the film Tenet. Biden also had a lot to say about the movie We Bought the Zoo in yet another deep fake recording.

However, not all of the deepfakes featuring Biden are benign and non-offensive. The president’s image has also been used for unscrupulous purposes like making transphobic comments and vowing to conscript men and women to go fight in the Russia-Ukraine war.

6. Venezuelan Government

Source: Youtube

It’s not often you find a government using deepfake content in an attempt to gaslight its entire population, but the Venezuelan authorities have proven themselves to be trailblazers in this regard.

Using software made by the London-based AI content generator, Synthesia, the Venezuelan government created fake news channels and anchors.

It then featured these fictitious news content and journalists on State TV networks as if they were legitimate broadcasts from reputable international channels.

In one of the broadcasts from a purported news network called House of News en Espanol, a newscaster asks and answers questions about the state of the Venezuelan economy in English.

It claimed that contrary to the data being reported by local authorities, Venezuela was not a poor nation and its economy was performing better than people might think.

This disgraceful attempt by the government to whitewash its achievements and intentionally deceive its own people with spurious claims speaks to the insidious nature of artificial intelligence.

It demonstrates how this innovative tool can be used for obscene purposes in the hands of the wrong people.

7. Rishi Sunak

Source: The Telegraph

The British Prime Minister was recently embroiled in a deepfake controversy that sparked conversations about how to effectively combat the unethical possibilities of AI.

In the manipulated image shared by a Labour MP on Twitter, Rishi Sunak is seen pulling an inferior pint of beer at the Great British Beer Festival. In the background of the image, a woman is observing his actions with a scornful look on her face.

It was later revealed that the image was faked from an original photo featuring Sunak pulling a magnificent pint of beer, while the woman in the background has a neutral expression.

Although there is no proof that the Labour MP had any knowledge that the photo was a deepfake before he shared it, the party still received criticisms for the misleading image.

Politicians and experts across the nation cited this event as an example of why serious efforts should be made to regulate AI and ensure it’s used for ethical purposes.

8. Argentinian Elections

Source: Quillette

Another example of deepfake in politics occurred in the recent elections in Argentina that brought President Javier Milei into power.

Campaign factions regularly shared AI-generated images, often with satirical messaging, to evoke emotional reactions in voters and sway public opinion against the opposition.

In the weeks leading up to the election, Milei deployed AI to create fabricated images of his opponent Sergio Massa to malign his reputation.

In one of the deepfake images which garnered over 3 million views on social media, Sergio Massa was portrayed as an old-fashioned communist, adorned in military attire with his hand raised in salutation.

Another doctored footage made use of Massa’s voice and image to make it seem like the Peronist presidential candidate was using drugs.

Massa’s team was not left out of the hijinks. They created and published a series of AI-generated videos and images via Instagram to demonize and undermine Milei’s character and candidacy.

Some of the images depicted Milei and his team as mindless pirates and angry zombies, while others showed the right-wing candidate as a Roman emperor and even as a soldier in a 1917 war movie footage.

9. Volodymyr Zelensky

Source: The Economist

In 2022, a video surfaced online of the Ukrainian President declaring surrender to Russia and calling on his soldiers to lay down their arms and go home to their families.

While the origin of the video is unknown, it first appeared in a live broadcast and on the website of the Ukrainian TV network, Ukrayina 24 after hackers breached the network’s services to upload the manipulated video.

From there, the content made its way to Telegram groups and other social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Thanks to the video’s poor quality and the fact that Zelensky’s head appears much larger and more pixelated than the rest of his body, it was fairly easy for people to deduce that the video was a deepfake.

Although the video wasn’t very believable, it still went viral before it was quickly taken down from most social networks for being fake and misleading.

10. Manoj Tiwari

Source: The Print

Unlike most of the examples of deepfake in politics in this list, Manoj Tiwari’s use of AI wasn’t malicious.

However, it still raises concerns that AI can fracture reality and create a situation where people are unable to trust the things they hear or see because these things can easily be manipulated.

Ahead of the parliamentary elections in Delhi, in February 2020, Manoj Tiwari, one of India’s most powerful politicians and President of the nation’s ruling party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), went viral for using deepfake videos in his campaign.

In the original campaign video that Tiwari made, he can be heard speaking in English. He asks people to vote for his party and denounces his main rival, Arvind Kejriwal.

But in several other videos edited using deepfake technology, Tiwari is heard speaking in different languages.

Apparently, his party collaborated with a firm specializing in political communications to produce deepfakes so they could target speakers across over 20 languages and dialects spoken in the country.

So in each video, Tiwari appears to be speaking in a specific language even though he’s not the one actually saying the words. The deepfake videos were shared far and wide with one of them reaching 5800 WhatsApp groups and 15 million people.

11. Turkish Elections

Source: DW

A few days before the Turkish presidential and parliamentary elections were scheduled to be held, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leading rival of the incumbent President Tayyip Erdogan released a statement to Russia.

Kilicdaroglu accused Russian authorities of masterminding deepfake campaigns to influence the outcome of the upcoming elections. He warned the country to abstain from interfering with the ballots by releasing fake materials and content.

Although he did not specify what content he was referring to, it may have had something to do with the video purportedly of Kilicdaroglu that Erdogan shared at a political rally.

In the video, Kilicdaroglu appears to be getting the endorsement of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (KPK), which Turkey, alongside the United Kingdom and the United States, classifies as a terrorist organization.

It was later revealed that the video was manipulated; two different clips were joined together and edited to make it look like Kilicdaroglu was fraternizing with terrorists.

By the time the truth came out, the video had already spread like wildfire and Erdogan ended up winning the election.

Muharram Ince, another candidate withdrew from the presidential race claiming that his character was being assassinated thanks to a deepfake sex tape of him that was released online.

Conclusion

Deepfakes are quickly becoming a staple part of our reality.

It’s no surprise that it’s already getting used in the political arena for everything from campaigning to maligning opponents and spreading disinformation.

Although a few organizations are working to review content like this, simply knowing that a video is fake after the fact doesn’t rewind time or make us unsee it.

However, until concrete actions are taken to mitigate the dangers of AI, you can try to be more conscious of the kind of content you consume and do your own fact-checking when you can.

Tom Clayton

Tom loves to write on technology, e-commerce & internet marketing. I started my first e-commerce company in college, designing and selling t-shirts for my campus bar crawl using print-on-demand. Having successfully established multiple 6 & 7-figure e-commerce businesses (in women’s fashion and hiking gear), I think I can share a tip or 2 to help you succeed.