Sean Topham: Digital strategist who advised Scott Morrison says AI deepfakes should be used in elections

One of the digital creatives who helped mastermind Scott Morrison, Boris Johnson and Christopher Luxon’s winning election campaigns says political parties should embrace the use of deepfakes in the online political battlefield.

In an exclusive interview with The Nightly in London where he is based, Sean Topham, one-half of the Kiwi creative digital agency Topham Guerin, said they had already used artificial intelligence to do voice work and create stock images.

But the 33-year-old, whom Boris Johnson nicknamed “DigiKiwi,” said neither the UK Labour nor Conservative parties were using AI to their advantage this election campaign.

He said AI could be used to communicate with non-English speaking voters in their own language, as well as for political attacks.

“I’m a big believer in it,” Mr Topham said.

“From an attack perspective, given where we’re at in the race I would have 100 per cent used deepfake attacks — without question,” he said.

“It’s part of the arsenal, you’ve got your back up against the wall, you’ve got Reform coming at you.

“You have to throw caution to the wind on some of that as long as it’s factually accurate, you’ll be fine.

“It’s been done in the US already.”

But he said it was ultimately up to parties to decide on whether they wanted to share deepfake content and that creative digital agencies only ever provided ideas and advice.

He said one example the Tories could do is mock-up Labour Leader Keir Starmer giving a speech on the steps of Downing Street, to warn about the opposition’s agenda in government.

The Tories are claiming Labour will introduce higher taxes after the election but are deliberately not telling voters before polling day.

When questioned about the ethics of parties creating deliberately fake content for political and electoral gain, Mr Topham said the content would be marked as AI-generated.

If the kids in the basement can do it, why can’t the major parties use it and leverage it in their favour?

“Look it’s an ad, at the end of the ad you say it’s an AI-generated ad but this is the country you could live in and this could be Keir’s speech on the steps of Number 10 Downing Street in a few weeks.

“Everyone can get upset about the ethical minefield but this is a digital war.”

He said random kids in basements were already creating non-party AI-generated content, pointing to an example posted on TikTok showing a faked Rishi Sunak and mocking his recent pledge to reintroduce a form of conscription for 18-year-olds, as well as a deepfake pretending the Tories were embarking on a zero-seats campaign.

“So if the kids in the basement can do it, why can’t the major parties use it and leverage it in their favour?,” he said.

“I think there’s a balanced way of doing it but they should have and could still have used them.”

How to deal with the challenges posed by using AI, including manufactured content is a problem faced by regulators around the world. The tools can also be used by hostile state actors to spread misinformation and undermine trust in institutions.

TG’s work on the 2019 Brexit campaign, in which they created Boris Johnson’s Love Actually parody in just 48 hours, propelled them onto the international stage.

But they also provoked controversy when they renamed the Conservative party press Twitter account Fact Check UK and live-tweeted as a fact-checking account during a leaders debate between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn.

Mr Topham defended the tactic.

“There has not been a single article about anything that was substantively tweeted while it purported to be a fact-checking source about the quality of the facts tweeted,” he said.

“Just that this account did this thing and that’s just not right, apparently.”

TG previously caught attention in Australia for their pioneering use of “Boomer Memes,” deliberately basic and tacky memes aimed at older Facebook users to hammer home Scott Morrison’s winning message in 2019, in an election Bill Shorten was widely expected to win for Labor.

Mr Topham and his business partner Ben Guerin are not working on the Conservatives’ campaign in the UK, which has been marred by gaffes from Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who is expected to lead the Tories to a massive loss on July 4.

Marcus Beard, who runs the AI and social media monitoring and research firm Fenimore Harper, worked with TG in Number 10 and worked on countering COVID disinformation.

He said the use of AI was uncharted territory for political parties.

“Unfortunately it’s still a legal grey area,” he said.

“Right now, if deep-fakes are used to mislead people about an individual’s character, the perpetrator could face defamation charges.

“When used irresponsibly, a deep-fake intended as satire could be understood as a fact. Some people may inadvertently be basing their voting decisions on mistruths.

“We all need to better understand the threat deep fakes and other AI-enhanced misinformation poses to that.”

The UK Labour and Conservative Parties were contacted for comment.