The Meta Oversight Board is investigating an apparently AI-generated video of a British politician that misrepresents his views on issues such as immigration. The committee said the video in question was part of an album posted on Facebook in November last year and featured an apparently fake Labor Party councilor who represents an area of Scotland making sarcastic and offensive comments about refugees and sexual assault.
In addition to the deepfake video, the post also includes a video of pro-Palestinian protesters that the Oversight Board also suspects is AI-generated, as well as a likely authentic still image of several women, including the politician in the first video, holding anti-far-right signs. The women are also named in the post, and the written caption is said to contain baseless accusations of tax evasion against the Labor politician.
The board says engagement with the post was relatively minimal, but it contained no AI labels or disclosures. He said two users alleged the content violated Meta’s bullying and harassment policy, but when the company’s systems failed to escalate their complaints for human review and the content remained on Facebook, one of them appealed to the board.
The case statement goes on to explain that the adviser in question clearly expressed what he saw as racist misinformation being used to stoke anti-migrant sentiment amid protests over the accommodation of asylum seekers in British hotels. They have previously reported threats and intimidation tactics used against them for speaking out on the issue, including AI-generated online smears.
The Oversight Board says Meta said the post was not flagged for removal or perceived to violate its rules because the politician is an adult public figure and therefore not automatically protected from “unwanted manipulated images.” Individuals can self-report harmful content and request its removal.
Meta also objected to claims that the content contained generalized statements about refugees that violated its hateful conduct policy, and said it did not meet the criteria for misinformation because it had not been flagged by anyone in its “Trusted Partner” program. This was also not considered electoral interference since the councilor depicted did not stand in the recent local elections in Scotland, and Meta cited the low engagement and “satirical” nature of the video as reasons why there was no need for an AI label to be applied to it.
The Oversight Board is now inviting public comments on the matter, which could inform any policy recommendations it may make to Meta. These are not binding, but Meta is required to respond to them within 60 days. As a reminder, the Supervisory Board is an independent external body despite its ultimate financial dependence on Meta.
Meta’s apparent indifference to the Scottish politician’s deepfake is even more surprising when you take into account the hot water she found herself in last year over an AI-generated video of (successful) Irish presidential candidate Catherine Connolly. In the video, the current president of Ireland appeared to announce that she was withdrawing from the election campaign, and it was shared almost 30,000 times on Facebook before being deleted.
Connolly called the video a “shameful attempt to mislead voters and undermine (Irish) democracy”, and Meta quickly deleted the account it was hosted on after being contacted by the Irish Independent. In this case, the video was found it to be violating Meta Community Standards, and this was far from the first time it had struggled to deal with the emergence of politically motivated deepfakes.
