Deepfakes can fool voters, but new research points to a deeper danger: genuine political footage is increasingly being dismissed as fake. As Victoria heads towards its November election, scepticism itself may become a vulnerability.

The Victorian election is still months away, yet voters are already being shown events which never happened. A machete attack at a petrol station, a woman giving birth on the roadside, floodwater pouring down the steps of parliament: all ‘deepfakes’ generated by artificial intelligence (AI), and all reportedly appearing as paid advertising ahead of voters going to the polls.

Previously described as a potential ‘sleeper issue’ for Australian politics, deepfake political content is rapidly becoming a very real electoral challenge.

We have been studying political deepfakes – and how people respond to them – in the lead-up to the Victorian state election. Our preliminary results provide important insights into people’s ability to detect deepfakes and will help voters navigate the increasingly fraught information ecosystem as electoral campaigning ramps up.

Deepfakes once required specialist technical expertise and software to convincingly produce. Today, they can be produced by anyone using commercial and open-source AI tools. And they’re getting harder and harder to spot.

We conducted a meta-analysis that brought together findings from previous published studies from 2018 to 2026 to understand political deepfakes more and what this could mean for upcoming elections.

Across 19 studies and more than 24,000 people, the results (which are yet to be published)........

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