Deep fakes ‘target’ Georgian opposition on TikTok ahead of elections

A Georgian elections watchdog has published a report outlining the increased use of AI technology in the pre-election period, including the creation of deep fakes based on opposition politicians.

On Tuesday, the International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) reported that anonymous actors had used AI technologies to forge the voices of Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili and For Georgia chair Giorgi Gakharia in videos shared on social media.

According to ISFED, one such anonymous account on TikTok also published a video featuring a compilation of AI-generated images to visualise what ‘the state of the country would be like’ if the previous government, likely referring to the United National Movement, were to regain power through the elections. 

In another example from TikTok, an AI-generated image was shared by a pro-opposition account depicting the celebration they anticipate to occur in Tbilisi if Georgian Dream is defeated.

The society, which also monitored Facebook, Instagram, and Telegram between 27 August and 20 September, noted an increase in the use of TikTok as a platform for campaigning ahead of the upcoming Georgian parliamentary elections on 26 October. They recorded over 2,500 political videos, and found there was an increase in content created specifically for the platform.

According to their report, 30 TikTok accounts were identified as being operated by political groups running in the October elections. Of these, 14 were operated by the opposition Coalition for Change. However, the report noted that the channels who targeted opposition groups had the most generated content and the largest number of views.

ISFED, who has successfully partnered in recent years with Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to remove government-originated manipulations from those platforms, described TikTok as a ‘less regulated space’ for disinformation. They noted in their report that this has made it easier for anonymous actors to ‘spread manipulated information’ on the platform.

The report also flagged a fake support account on TikTok targeting and misrepresenting the opposition Unity — National Movement alliance; similar strategies significantly impacted political communication in the Georgian-language segment of Facebook in previous years.

[Read also: Datablog | Young, in the city, and online: most Georgians use more than one social media platform] 

State Security Service issues AI warning 

On 16 October, just hours after ISFED released their statement, Georgia’s State Security Service (SSG) issued a warning on Facebook about the use of AI technologies to create manipulated videos and audio representing government officials ahead of the 26 October parliamentary elections.

They also alleged that ‘groups linked to political circles’ were planning to claim that these deep fakes were leaks from the SSG.

‘The purpose of spreading this false information is to incite conflict between different branches of government, sow discord between the government and the Orthodox Church, and damage relations between the government and its Western partners’, the SSG claimed. 

They added that the deep fakes would be used to ‘stir up protest sentiment’ among the Georgian public, leading to potential ‘destabilisation in the country’. 

While the SSG did not specify the authors behind the alleged fake leaks, shortly after, Georgia’s Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze alleged that the SSG had been referring to deep fakes that were being prepared by the ‘radical opposition and their foreign patrons’. 

The SSG has never addressed allegations of illegal surveillance, including on members of the clergy, ahead of the October 2021 local elections.

[Read more: Leaked ‘kompromat’ against the clergy rocks Georgia]