Overseas 'content farms' creating political deepfakes uncovered
Summary
Overseas 'content farms' based in Vietnam are using AI to create fake videos and images of UK politicians, spreading them on Facebook to go viral and potentially earn money through the platform's monetization program. The fake content, called deepfakes (digitally altered videos, pictures, or audio made to look real), depicts politicians in false situations like hospital stays or compromising scenarios, and Meta has removed some pages after investigation, though new ones continue appearing daily.
Solution / Mitigation
The Electoral Commission is developing software to spot and combat deepfakes ahead of the Welsh and Scottish parliaments' elections in May. Additionally, Facebook has marked some false stories with warnings from third-party fact-checkers like Full Fact, and Meta removed several Vietnam-based pages after being contacted by the BBC.
Classification
Affected Vendors
Related Issues
Original source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c07jj7d72yzo?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss
First tracked: March 12, 2026 at 08:00 AM
Classified by LLM (prompt v3) · confidence: 85%