Associated Incidents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
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Over 100 deep-fake video advertisements impersonating Prime Minister Rishi Sunak were paid to be promoted on Meta's platform in the last month.
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These ads may have reached over 400,000 people, despite explicitly breaking several of Meta's ad policies.
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143 individual ads were uncovered and up to £12,929 has been spent on these advertisements in the last month alone (December 8th 2023 - January 8th 2024).
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Funding for the ads originates from 23 different countries including Turkey, Malaysia, the Philippines and the United States.
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It appears to be the first widespread paid promotion of a deep-faked video of a UK political figure.
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This is likely to be the first of many AI-enhanced misinformation campaigns of 2024, raising questions about social media platform's ability to moderate election interference at scale.