Event: Spain

A political ad from Spain’s main opposition party that used a deepfake video of the prime minister’s wife has sparked outrage and set off a wider debate on AI, as the deeply polarised country gears up for general elections next month.Launched this week across the social media channels of the conservative People’s party (PP), the video used artificial intelligence to manipulate the likenesses of various people linked to Pedro Sánchez’s Socialist party and appeared to show them admitting to acts such as soliciting prostitutes and taking kickbacks.An AI-generated version of Sánchez’s wife, Begoña Gómez, for example, speaks about receiving a university post thanks to her husband’s job, while a deepfake of the former Socialist president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero speaks about hiding jewellery in a safe. Both lines are nods to ongoing investigations in which Gómez and Zapatero have denied any wrongdoing.A still from the People’s party AI-generated video featuring a deepfake of Begoña Gomez. Computer-generated: @ppopular/XThe Socialist party was swift to respond to the video, which by Friday had racked up nearly 2m views. “It’s telling people a colossal lie, and for a party to do it on its official accounts seems intolerable to me,” Óscar López, Spain’s digital transformation minister, told the broadcaster TVE on Friday.While the video noted at the bottom – in tiny, nearly transparent font – that it had been created with AI, López pointed to the wider risk. “It’s very easy for anyone who isn’t used to AI to confuse that video with reality,” he said. “And call me crazy, but that seems extremely serious to me.”On Friday, one of those whose likeness was used in the video filed a legal challenge against the PP, calling on the party to immediately take down the campaign advert. In a court complaint, Leire Díez, a former…