Tag Archives: Catherine

Business This week Ireland witnessed its first sophisticated electoral deepfake, when an AI generated video, mimicking RTÉ news, told users of Facebook and YouTube that the election had been cancelled and Heather Humphreys declared the winner, because Catherine Connolly had exited the campaign (this is not true). To understand what happened, and how to respond, we need to also consider why people may have gone to great efforts to get this video in front of us. There are at least four reasons why someone might carry out an act of electoral disinformation. The first is to influence the outcome of an election. Lies about how or when to vote, who is eligible, or as we saw here this week, that an election has been cancelled, can be used to stop certain voters from turning up on...