Deepfakes: General Election

Viscount Colville of Culross Excerpts

Wednesday 8th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

First, let me absolutely endorse the noble Lord’s sentiment: this is a deplorable way to behave that should not be tolerated. From hearing the noble Lord speak of the actions, my assumption is that they would fall foul of the false communications offence under Section 179 of the Online Safety Act. As I say, these actions are absolutely unacceptable.

[Viscount Colville of Culross (CB)]

My Lords, noble Lords will be aware of the threat of AI-generated deepfake election messages flooding the internet during an election campaign. At the moment, only registered users have to put a digital imprint giving the provenance of the content on unpaid election material. Does the Minister think that a requirement to put a digital imprint on all unpaid election material should be introduced to counter fake election messages?

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

The noble Viscount is right to point to the digital imprint regime as one of the tools at our disposal for limiting the use of deepfakes. I think we would hesitate to have a blanket law that all materials of any kind would be required to have a digital imprint on them—but, needless to say, we will take away the idea and consider it further.