Watchdog in pilot project to combat 'deep fake' images and videos during Scottish Parliament election campaign
Scotland's election watchdog is working with the Home Office to tackle the threat of "deep fake" images and videos at this year's Holyrood elections.
The rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has allowed the creation of manipulated pictures and videos which can appear real but are in fact false. It can include well-known figures saying things which they never said.
Sarah Mackie, head of the Electoral Commission in Scotland, said: "We have a project we're setting up with the Home Office using technology to identify deep fakes related to the election."
She said it was still at the development stage, but it was hoped the technology would be in place before March 24, the start of the "short campaign" - the six-week immediate run up to election.
She said: "What we're looking at is, if people report something to us or we see something, we can send it through and the technology can identify whether something is a fake or something is real.
"The technology would run it through and say, for example, that it's 90 per cent likely to be fake. What we can then do is put that information out to the public and the people concerned."
She acknowledged the commission - the independent body which oversees elections and political finance across the UK - had no powers on the matter beyond sharing the information.
But she said they would involve the police and also the sites where the deep fakes were posted.
She said: "We would contact the social media companies, but some are more helpful than others.
"What we don't have at the moment, and which we want, is 'take down' powers where we go to the social media companies and demand that something is taken down."
The technology, is being developed as a pilot project specifically for the elections for Holyrood and the Welsh Senedd on Thursday May 7. Ms Mackie said: "We are working at speed to get it in place."
The prospect of deep fakes comes on top of the long-standing problem of online threats and abuse which many politicians face.
And Ms Mackie said candidate safety was her main concern about the coming Holyrood election.
“If women or those from an ethnic minority don't want to stand because they are scared of the trolls online or in the real world, that's not the kind of democracy we want to have."
She said the Scottish Parliament was doing good work on online harassment and bullying, working with the police.