Deepfake Joe Biden threatens to defund US police

Occurred: August 2020

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A video shared by US Republican Congressman Steve Scalise of US President candidate Joe Biden apparently threatening to defund the police in a discussion with healthcare activist Ady Barkan has been debunked as a deepfake. 

The video was found to have been manipulated by splicing in the words 'for police' during a quote from Barkan from an original video of an interview between Barkan and Joe Biden that was published by NowThis News. 

Under pressure from Barkan and others, Scalise later deleted the faked video. Twitter had labelled the video as manipulated. 

The incident was one in a number of deepfakes released during the 2020 US Presidential election that were seen likely to jeopardise US political processes and democracy.

Operator: Steve Scalise
Developer: Steve Scalise
Country: USA
Sector: Politics
Purpose: Damage reputation
Technology: Deepfake - video, audio; Generative adversarial network (GAN); Neural network; Deep learning; Machine learning
Issue: Mis/disinformation
Transparency: Governance; Marketing

Page info
Type: Incident
Published: August 2023