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A fake recording of a candidate saying he’d rigged the election went viral. Experts say it’s only the beginning

Days before a pivotal election in Slovakia to determine who would lead the country, a damning audio recording spread online in which one of the top candidates seemingly boasted about how he’d rigged the election.

The recordings immediately went viral on social media, and the candidate, who is pro-NATO and aligned with Western interests, was defeated in September by an opponent who supported closer ties to Moscow and Russian President Vladimir Putin. While the number of votes swayed by the leaked audio remains uncertain, two things are now abundantly clear: The recordings were fake, created using artificial intelligence; and US officials see the episode in Europe as a frightening harbinger of the sort of interference the United States will likely experience during the 2024 presidential election. Daniel Milo, who until December ran a center within Slovakia’s Ministry of Interior setup to counter disinformation, said the debacle showed the way in which some major social media platforms lack processes to effectively respond to deepfakes.

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