Deepfake Democracy: The Alarming Rise of AI-Generated Political Disinformation

The 2024 American election season is expected to be the first in which manipulated audio and video content of political candidates becomes a significant concern. As campaigns gain momentum, voters should be aware that voice clones of prominent political figures are easily created and disseminated, with minimal resistance from AI companies.

A recent study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate highlights this issue, exposing the ease with which fake audio content can be generated.

The study examined six AI-powered voice cloning services – Invideo AI, Veed, ElevenLabs, Speechify, Descript, and PlayHT – and attempted to create voice clones of eight major political figures, generating five false statements in each voice. Alarmingly, 193 out of 240 requests were successful,