As AI deepfakes cause havoc during other elections, experts warn the UK’s politicians should be prepared.

“Just tell me what you had for breakfast”, says Mike Narouei, of ControlAI, recording on his laptop. I speak for around 15 seconds, about my toast, coffee and journey to their offices.

Within seconds, I hear my own voice, saying something entirely different.

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In this case, words I have written: “Deepfakes can be extremely realistic and have the ability to disrupt our politics and damage our trust in the democratic process.”

We have used free software, it hasn’t taken any advanced technical skills, and the whole thing has taken next to no time at all.

This is an audio deepfake – video ones take more effort to produce – and as well as being deployed by scammers of all kinds, there is deep concern, in a year with some two billion people going to the polls, in the US, India and dozens of other countries including the UK, about their impact on elections.

Sir Keir Starmer fell victim to one at last year’s Labour Party conference, purportedly of him swearing at staff. It was quickly outed as a fake. The identity of who made it has never been uncovered.

London mayor Sadiq Khan was also targeted this year, with fake audio of him making inflammatory remarks about Remembrance weekend and calling for pro-Palestine marches going viral at a tense time for communities. He claimed new laws were needed to stop them.

Ciaran Martin, the former director of the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, told Sky News that expensively made video fakes can be less effective and easier to debunk than audio.

“I’m particularly worried right now about audio, because audio deepfakes are spectacularly easy to make, disturbingly easy”, he said. “And if they’re cleverly deployed, they can have an impact.”

Those which have been most damaging, in his view, are an audio deepfake of President Biden, sent to voters during the New Hampshire primaries in January this year.

A “robocall” with the president’s voice told voters to stay at home and “save” their votes for the presidential election in November. A political consultant later claimed responsibility and has been indicted and fined $6m (£4.7m).

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Mr Martin, now a professor at the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University, said: “It was a very credible imitation of his voice and anecdotal evidence suggests some people were tricked by that.

“Not least because it wasn’t an email they could forward to someone else to have a look at, or on TV where lots of people were watching. It was a call to their home which they more or less had to judge alone.

“Targeted audio, in particular, is probably the biggest threat right now, and there’s no blanket solution, there’s no button there that you can just press and make this problem go away if you are prepared to pay for it or pass the right laws.

“What you need, and the US did this very well in 2020, is a series of responsible and well-informed eyes and ears throughout different parts of the electoral system to limit and mitigate the damage.”

He says there is a risk to hyping up the threat of deepfakes, when they have not yet caused mass electoral damage.

A Russian-made fake broadcast of Ukrainian TV, he said, featuring a Ukrainian official taking responsibility for a terrorist attack in Moscow, was simply “not believed”, despite being expensively produced.

The UK government has passed a National Security Act with new offences of foreign interference in the country’s democratic processes.

The Online Safety Act requires tech companies to take such content down, and meetings are being regularly held with social media companies during the pre-election period.

Democracy campaigners are concerned that deepfakes could be used not just by hostile foreign actors, or lone individuals who want to disrupt the process – but political parties themselves.

Polly Curtis is chief executive of the thinktank Demos, which has called on the parties to agree to a set of guidelines for the use of AI.

She said: “The risk is that you’ll have foreign actors, you’ll have political parties, you’ll have ordinary people on the street creating content and just stirring the pot of what’s true and what’s not true.

“We want them to come together and agree together how they’re going to use these tools at the election. We want them to agree not to create generative AI or amplify it, and label it when it is used.

“This technology is so new, and there are so many elections going on, there could be a big misinformation event in an election campaign that starts to affect people’s trust in the information they’ve got.”

Deepfakes have already been targeted at major elections.

Last year, within hours before polls closed in the Slovakian presidential election, an audio fake of one of the candidates claiming to have rigged the election went viral. He was heavily defeated and his pro-Russian opponent won.

The UK government established a Joint Election Security Preparations Unit earlier this year – with Whitehall officials working with police and security agencies – to respond to threats as they emerge.

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A UK government spokesperson said: “Security is paramount and we are well-prepared to ensure the integrity of the election with robust systems in place to protect against any potential interference.

“The National Security Act contains tools to tackle deepfake election threats and social media platforms should also proactively take action against state-sponsored content aimed at interfering with the election.”

A Labour spokesperson said: “Our democracy is strong, and we cannot and will not allow any attempts to undermine the integrity of our elections.

“However, the rapid pace of AI technology means that government must now always be one step ahead of malign actors intent on using deepfakes and disinformation to undermine trust in our democratic system.

“Labour will be relentless in countering these threats.”

A rape survivor who held on to “the guilt and the shame” for years before reporting her attacker has told Sky News she has now “passed it on to him” after he was jailed for seven years.

Warning: The following article contains details of serious sexual assault

The woman, who is retaining her legal right to anonymity, was raped by DJ Alisdair Randalls when she was just 18 in December 2015.

She told Sky News that she “never wanted to go to the police” but after years of suffering in silence she realised she had to take action to avoid anyone else potentially being hurt and to “show the world that no means no”.

Randalls, who was 21 at the time of the attack and is now 30, denied any wrongdoing but in April was found guilty of rape following a trial at the High Court in Aberdeen.

He was sentenced at the High Court in Glasgow on 15 May.

The woman, now 27, said: “I just felt like I had to help and put people like him away. You can’t live in fear of these people.

“I held the guilt and the shame and all of that for ages, for years.

“And I’ve passed it on to him. He can take it now. It’s on him to deal with it when he comes out.”

The pair had matched on Tinder and had been flirting for around three weeks before Randalls encouraged the teenager to meet him at his flat in Aberdeen after he had been out drinking.

The woman said Randalls had previously been “flirty and chatty” and appeared to be a “nice boy”.

However, when she changed her mind about having sex, he ignored her pleas to stop and went on to rape her.

During the attack, he seized her by the throat.

The woman, who described Randalls as “a devil and a beast”, confided in her flatmate and a friend over what happened.

She was then forced to seek therapy after being unable to cope with the aftermath of the rape.

‘I didn’t want to be here any more’

The woman said: “I did not know what to do with myself. I didn’t want to be here any more. It was that bad.

“It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever gone through in my life. I could not function.

“I felt guilty, I felt embarrassed, I felt ashamed. I was angry. I was like, ‘why me? Why did he pick me?’

“I cried all the time. It was honestly awful. I can’t really remember a lot of the emotions either, because I’ve kind of blocked it.”

The woman saw Randalls during a night out around a year after the attack.

She said he grabbed her arm and attempted to say hello, but she managed to escape and hid in the toilets.

The woman eventually reported Randalls in December 2021 and he was subsequently arrested and charged.

The woman said: “I felt no one would believe me.”

However, she received support from Police Scotland and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS).

She said: “They were so understanding. They took their time with me. They were all lovely. They made me feel comfortable and not to feel embarrassed about it.”

‘The defence lawyer’s questioning felt personal’

The woman said the lengthy wait for the trial was difficult and in the lead-up to the proceedings she was “all over the place”.

At court, she was even caught off guard when she heard Randalls’ name over the tannoy.

The trial took four days and the woman felt the brunt of the defence lawyer as he attempted to clear his client.

She said: “It was a shock. Everyone warns you, saying ‘oh it’s tough’. But it was brutal.

“It felt like it was personal. They say it’s not and it’s just his job, but it felt personal. It felt nasty and he was trying to discredit me in any way.”

‘I felt like the judge took it seriously’

Following the conviction, sentencing Judge Lord Colbeck said Randalls accepted “no responsibility” for his crime.

He added: “You show little or no insight in to your offending behaviour and the impact this has had upon your victim.”

As well as the seven-year jail sentence, Randalls was also banned for life from contacting the woman and was placed on the sex offenders’ register indefinitely.

The woman said she was “shocked” with the sentence, saying: “I didn’t expect that. I was stunned, I actually was. I felt like the judge took it seriously.”

The woman has dated since the attack, but is still “very, very wary”.

She said: “I genuinely thought he was a nice boy. So, just not knowing people’s true intentions, it does scare me.”

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The woman understands there will be many others who have suffered similar assaults but are too scared to come forward.

She admitted the court process is “not easy”, with some parts “completely out of your control”, but she stressed you “can’t let these people roam the streets”.

‘I have to show the world that no means no’

She said: “It’s a lengthy process, and it can be tedious waiting months and even years in my case to get anywhere. Sometimes I thought it was never-ending.

“Additionally, I thought it was difficult enough to tell friends and family, however, standing up to tell my story to 20 strangers was the part I felt most vulnerable.

“I definitely went through stages of being re-traumatised and it made everything that bit more physically and emotionally draining.

“There were points I wanted to give up. All I could tell myself was that even though I don’t want to do this, I have to do this.

“I have to protect every single woman from him. I have to make this world a safer place. I have to safeguard the future of young girls from monsters like him. I have to hold him accountable for what he has done. I have to show the world that no means no.

“I was not guaranteed a positive outcome, no one is, but all you have to do is try.

“If we don’t try then we won’t get anywhere. It’s so cliché but you don’t realise how strong you actually are. If I can do it, anyone can.”

‘You don’t need to cope alone’

Katrina Parkes, Scotland’s procurator fiscal for high court sexual offences, commended the woman “for her courage” in reporting Randalls and for helping to bring him to justice.

Sandy Brindley, the chief executive of Rape Crisis Scotland, is urging all those who are in need of support to get in touch.

She said: “No matter how long ago it happened, if you have been affected by sexual violence, you don’t need to cope alone.

“When you’re ready to talk, rape crisis services are ready to listen.”

Helplines if you are in need of support:
• Rape Crisis Scotland – 08088 01 03 02
• Rape Crisis England and Wales – 0808 500 2222
• Rape Crisis Network Ireland – 1800 778 888
• Rape Crisis Northern Ireland – 0800 0246 991

Labour has announced its plans to reduce net migration – with Sir Keir Starmer accusing the Conservatives of having “repeatedly broken their promises” to get the number down.

It marks another attempt by the Labour Party to appeal to Conservative voters.

Figures published after Rishi Sunak called the general election showed a net of 685,000 arrived in the UK last year – down from a record of 764,000 in 2022.

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The 2023 figure is still three times the number in 2019 when the last election took place. The Conservatives promised in their manifesto that year to get net migration down.

In 2012, when the data from the Office for National Statistics starts, net migration was just under 200,000.

Sir Keir said he wanted to see any government he leads ban “the practices employed by businesses who exploit the migration system by illegally undercutting working conditions”.

The announcement tonight mirrors policies proposed by shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper in November last year, and some bear similarities to current government objectives.

Sir Keir added: “With Labour, Britain will be less reliant on migration by training more UK workers.

“The Tories have repeatedly broken their promises to bring down net migration. Since 2010, they have published four manifestos promising to bring down net migration.”

The Labour leader said he wants to compel parts of Whitehall to cooperate so “migration triggers a plan to train UK workers and improve jobs”.

Employment sectors like health and construction that have been reliant on migration to fill “skill gaps” will be made to draw up workforce plans, with another pledge to reform the points-based migration system.

The aim, according to Labour, is to “fire up skills training rather than look overseas”.

One pledge is to ban employers and agencies that break employment law from hiring overseas workers.

Another is to stop the “workplace exploitation” of foreign workers being used to undercut wages.

Some in the Conservative Party have claimed Labour are rebranding policies the government has already enacted.

The government previously pledged to increase the threshold on salaries required for visas, and pledged to scrap “cut-price shortage labour from overseas” by scrapping discounts to visa salary requirements for those in short-staffed sectors.

Those employers looking to get on the shortage occupation list have to show they are also training domestic workers.

Conservative candidate Jonathan Gullis tweeted that “nobody buys” Sir Keir’s plans.

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A spokesperson for Reform UK, which is campaigning heavily on reducing immigration, said: “Sir Keir’s first suggestion is to prosecute a law that already exists about illegally paying below minimum wage, the other is a pious wish.

“Labours offer is nothing new and will make no difference. If you want to make a change, Vote Reform to freeze immigration.”