AI deepfakes and misinformation surrounding elections 'inevitable', says electoral commission CEO

Art O’Leary, CEO of the Electoral Commission. Picture: Moya Nolan

It is “inevitable” that deepfake AI videos of Irish politicians aimed at misleading the public and undermining the integrity of our elections will surface in the coming years, the head of Ireland’s electoral commission has said.

An Coimisiún Toghcháin chief executive Art O’Leary said that the “potential here is off the charts” when it comes to fake content created with artificial intelligence, in the wake of a realistic-looking video of President Catherine Connolly announcing her “withdrawal” from the election just a few days before polling day.

“It's the first time we had seen a sophisticated, deep fake,” he said. “You know, most of the efforts up to now have been ham-fisted or amusing.

“I speak to my counterparts all the time, all over the world, and it's the one thing that we come back to at the top of every agenda is mis- and disinformation, deep fakes and how we manage that.” 

In a wide-ranging interview with the Irish Examiner, Mr O’Leary spoke about the impact of such AI videos while also discussing the country’s ailing electoral register, the “spoil the vote” campaign and whether or not we should ditch the ubiquitous election posters erected on poles across the country ahead of elections.

“Ultimately, the long-term solution here is digital and media literacy,” he said of AI deepfakes.

We need to educate people in relation to the material that they find online.

“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.

“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. 

"Because if thousands of these things are appearing in minutes or hours, it’s trying to keep track of all of them.” 

While the account that shared the video of Ms Connolly was suspended by Meta, the video had been shared and seen widely before it was taken down.

Ms Connolly lodged a formal complaint with the Electoral Commission over the video, describing it as “malicious” and a “disgraceful attempt to mislead voters and undermine our democracy”.

Mr O’Leary said his organisation has “whitelist” channels with social media companies where they are given priority access to report issues in the run up to elections and they were able to escalate the matter to Meta in this instance.

“It does show what can happen when there is an obvious case here,” he said. “Now some cases aren’t as immediately obvious, or maybe some of the social media companies won’t be as cooperative either but the system works if you build relationships.” 

Regarding the “spoil the vote” campaign, he said that a report is expected back in the new year with strong data on why people voted the way they did in the presidential election including why they may have spoiled their vote.

“I know there are many people who felt that they would have liked an additional candidate on the ballot paper,” he said.

I saw thousands of spoiled votes. I was in a number of count centres on 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’.

“There are lots and lots of different reasons, and our data might provide some evidence in relation to what that might have meant.” 

Mr O’Leary also hit out at the “illegal” posting online by people who had spoiled their ballot papers.

“People are not supposed to take photographs of ballot papers, and because the privacy of the vote, and it's supposed to be very personal to you etc, so it's a secret ballot,” he said. “It's not something we encourage.”