PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Misinformation: General Elections (15 May 2023)

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what assessment her Department has made of the potential risks of deepfake (a) audio, (b) photo and (c) video content to the conduct of future UK general elections.

Asked by:
Darren Jones (Labour)

The Government is committed to ensuring that people have access to accurate information. We are taking steps to promote trusted news sources to tackle the spread of disinformation and combat attempts to artificially manipulate the information environment. The Department for Science, Innovation and Technology Counter Disinformation Unit responds to periods of acute disinformation risk, including UK general elections.

The Government regularly meets with a range of social media platforms to aid our understanding of the spread of misinformation and disinformation on their services, including artificially manipulated media, and the range of steps they are taking to address this. This work includes encouraging platforms to ensure that their Terms of Service (ToS), policies and enforcement are fit for purpose, whilst still respecting freedom of expression.

The National Security Bill will give the UK more tools to tackle these threats, including a new offence of foreign interference. The foreign interference offence is a priority offence in the Online Safety Bill and as such will require digital platforms to proactively take action against a wide range of state-sponsored disinformation and state-linked online interference, including digitally manipulated content where this has the aim of interfering with UK elections.

Answered by:
Paul Scully (Conservative)
22 May 2023