Ahead of the May 7 parliamentary elections in Scotland and Wales and local elections in England, videos are being shared on Facebook showing fake people appearing as real voters.
The clip shows the presenter talking to random people on the street about who they will vote for, with everyone saying Reform Britain, except for one who said Restoration.
We found that both the video and audio elements of the footage contained SynthID, an invisible watermark that appears on content created or modified by Google’s AI tools.
There are many other clues that the video should be viewed with suspicion, including strange writing on a bus stop at one point, the number 73 bus with its destination simply listed as “London,” and a store with the unlikely name “Local Shop” at the end of the video.
Join 73,000 newsletter subscribers who trust us to check the facts
Sign up to get weekly updates on politics, immigration, health and more.
Subscribe to Full Fact’s weekly email newsletter to stay up to date on politics, immigration, health and more. Fact checks are free to read, but not to create. As a result, you will occasionally receive emails about fundraising events and other ways to help. You can unsubscribe at any time. For more information on how we use your data, please see our Privacy Policy.
We previously fact-checked posts containing fake AI content from the account behind this video. Posts like this, shared before Election Day without any indication that they were created by AI, can mislead voters about what is true and undermine democracy.
Before sharing content you see online, it’s important to consider whether you can trust it. Our Full Fact toolkit and guide to identifying AI media can help you do this.
