Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what recent assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of AI generated deepfakes on elections in the UK.

The Government works continuously to understand, assess and address the risks presented by emerging and critical technologies. To date, the Cabinet Office has drawn on a significant range of analysis to inform Government understanding of the risks associated with Artificial Intelligence and the UK elections; we continue to coordinate with other Lead Government Departments.

We keep our assessments of these issues under constant review. For example, in the lead up to the AI Safety Summit, a suite of products was published by the Government to help inform the public and Summit participants of our assessment of the risks and opportunities associated with the use of AI. The risk to the information environment was included within this: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/frontier-ai-capabilities-and-risks-discussion-paper.

More broadly, the security of elections is considered a priority task across HMG and touches on work being undertaken by the Defending Democracy Task Force, DSIT and within the National Security Secretariat in Cabinet Office.