Deepfake video shows UK prime minister endorsing main opponent

Another day, another deepfake.

In recent months we've seen Bill Hader doing an impression of Tom Cruise, Niall Horan morphed into Diplo, and even Arnold Schwarzenegger starring in No Country for Old Men.

But today's additions are a little more troubling.

On Tuesday morning, a think tank called Future Advocacy released two videos ahead of the UK's general election: a deepfake of UK prime minister Boris Johnson appearing to endorse Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, and vice versa.

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OK, so the voices aren't quite right, but it's pretty uncanny all the same.

What's the point, though? Well according to an online press release, Future Advocacy has shared these videos — made by UK artist Bill Posters — in order to send a warning about disinformation.

“Deepfakes represent a genuine threat to democracy and society more widely," said Future Advocacy's head of think tank Areeq Chowdhury. "They can be used to fuel misinformation and totally undermine trust in audiovisual content.

"Despite warnings over the past few years, politicians have so far collectively failed to address the issue of disinformation online. Instead the response has been to defer to tech companies to do more."

These tech companies, it's worth noting, are still wrestling with how best to handle the issue — on Monday, Twitter shared a survey asking for help from its users in developing its "synthetic and manipulated media" policies, while Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg indicated back in the summer that the company was still discussing how best to navigate deepfakes.

Chowdhury, however, said that rather than in the boardrooms of Silicon Valley, the responsibility for protecting against disinformation lies with Westminster.

"By releasing these deepfakes, we aim to use shock and humour to inform the public and put pressure on our lawmakers," he said. "This issue should be put above party politics. We urge all politicians to work together to update our laws and protect society from the threat of deepfakes, fake news, and micro-targeted political adverts online.”