Muharrem Ince withdraws from Turkey election after porn 'deepfake'

Occurred: May 2023

Homeland Party head Muharrem Ince withdrew from Turkey's presidential race after the release of an alleged sex tape, which he accused of being a deepfake designed to damage his reputation and campaign.

'Fake videos, fake pictures… they put my face on a video taken from an Israeli porn website,' Ince complained' blaming the country’s journalists and public prosecutors for not protecting him from the 'fury of slander'.

In a related incident, Presidential candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu was subjected to a number of deepfake attacks, including one in which he appeared to have close links with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The PKK is listed as a terrorist organisation by the US, EU, and Turkey.

Commentators fear the use of deepfakes in Turkey's election could well be a harbinger of things to come.

System 🤖

Operator: Anonymous/pseudonymous
Developer: Justice and Development Party (AKP)
Country: Turkey
Sector: Politics
Purpose: Damage reputation
Technology: Mis/disinformation; Ethics
Issue: Deepfake - video; Generative adversarial network (GAN); Neural network; Deep learning; Machine learning
Transparency: Governance; Marketing

Page info
Type: Incident
Published: May 2023