Election interference from the NCSC’s annual review

With the rise of deepfakes, the concerns around election interference are rightfully being raised by the NCSC. We’ve seen already that it can be extremely difficult to spot deepfakes, and humans are starting to fall for them.

The need to address the situation is more urgent than ever. Deepfakes can affect every aspect of our society – from the integrity of elections to trust in politicians – leaving voters confused and questioning what is true.

In order to truly tackle the problem of deepfakes, we need to educate users in the same way we do for other types of scams. A deepfake video usually contains inconsistencies that become evident when a face or body moves. An ear, for example, may have certain irregularities, or the iris doesn’t show the natural reflection of light.

Also, technologies with AI techniques such as biometrics, can also be used to detect deepfakes and protect the integrity of elections. Anti-spoofing techniques within biometrics can be used to spot differentiators between synthetic and authentic voices. Furthermore, having multi-factor authentication processes, which include voice biometrics and facial recognitions, make it much harder to impersonate politicians or electorate spokespeople.

Ultimately, by having proactive security measures to detect and stop deepfakes, the spreading of disinformation before, during and after elections can be limited.