Deepfake technology could be used by UK’s enemies to cause election chaos, MI5 chief warns

• Ken McCallum warned that AI was being used for terrorism and propaganda

Deepfake technology could be harnessed by hostile states to sway the forthcoming general election, the head of MI5 has warned.

Ken McCallum said he was concerned that the technology could be used to create ‘all kinds of dissension and chaos in our societies’.

Speaking at a security summit in California, the Director General warned that artificial technology was also being used to amplify terrorism, disseminate propaganda and teach people how to build bombs.

At the first joint conference by the Five Eyes intelligence alliance comprising Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, AI was described by FBI Director Christopher Wray as a ‘serious threat’.

He said it was akin to ‘information warfare’ when ‘in the hands of malicious actors, whether they be terrorists or nation states’.

Ken McCallum said he was concerned that the technology could be used to create ‘all kinds of dissension and chaos in our societies’

When asked whether he was concerned that deepfakes could be used to skew public opinion at elections, Mr McCallum said: ‘I share the concerns that Director Wray outlined that deepfake technologies do clearly have potential to cause all kinds of confusion and dissension and chaos in our societies.

‘The technology has now become significantly more sophisticated than was previously the case. And that clearly does open up the possibility that a range of actors of various sorts, that wouldn’t necessarily just be limited to the intelligence services of adversary nations, might seek to use these technologies to influence public opinion in all kinds of ways.’

He added: ‘We would be not doing our jobs properly if we didn’t really think through the possibility.’

A deepfake usually involves an image or video in which a person or object is visually or audibly manipulated to say and do something that is fabricated.

Earlier this month faked audio of Sir Keir Starmer was posted on the first day of the Labour Party Conference.

The first audio clip, posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, purported to capture the Labour leader abusing party staffers, but the incident never happened. A second clip falsely made out that Sir Keir was criticising Liverpool where the conference was held.

Mr McCallum told the conference at Stanford University: ‘If we were to detect sophisticated use of deepfakes coming from the obvious nations, that would be something we’d be seeking to do something about.

‘Clearly one of the best responses to deepfakes is to spot them and then make public that that’s what they are. So that would have to be a sort of team response to that situation if it were to arise.’

At the first joint conference by the Five Eyes intelligence alliance comprising Britain, Australia, Canada , New Zealand and the United States, AI was described by FBI Director Christopher Wray as a ‘serious threat’

He warned that AI poses ‘a range of risks’, including ‘enabling terrorism and the spread of dangerous knowledge in ways that we would all regret’.

Mr McCallum revealed that AI has some benefits for MI5, which uses specialist programmes to scan thousands of hours of taped audio to pick up matters of concern.

He added: ‘The fact that the Prime Minister is hosting the first global summit on AI in the UK in early November seems to me a good thing.

‘It is high time that the nations of the world sat around a table to start talking about how we collectively get the most from AI, while also managing the risks because both are real.’

Director Wray said that the technology was now so sophisticated that hackers can post fake videos to parents claiming they have kidnapped their children by mimicking their voices.

The Director General warned that artificial technology was also being used to amplify terrorism, disseminate propaganda and teach people how to build bombs

‘Misinformation, malign foreign influence, these are information warfare by foreign adversaries’, he said.

‘The use of AI in a way that if it’s sophisticated enough to create potential deepfakes is something that adds a level of threat we haven’t previously encountered.

‘It’s not that there have never been any efforts of deepfakes before. But for the most part, they have been fairly easily detected.

‘And so that is something that we’re on the lookout for, as a place where, again, an existing strategy by hostile nations could become more dangerous.’

He added: ‘We are of course concerned that AI in the hands of malicious actors, whether they be terrorists or nation states, can be misused and that’s an important topic that we’re discussing constantly among us as an alliance.

Mr Wray said he is aware of people using AI to circumvent safeguards built into infrastructure to search for how to build a bomb, or ways to obfuscate such searches.

‘We’ve seen AI used to essentially amplify the distribution or dissemination of terrorist propaganda… AI is a very exciting technology that has the potential to do a lot of good for people’s lives that can in the wrong hands, with the wrong values, be extraordinarily dangerous as well.’

He also warned that hostile states such as China were ‘misusing AI to amplify their own hacking programme which is bigger than that of every other major nation combined’.

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