School of Social and Political Science

Content

School of Social and Political Science (SPS) academics Dr Ben Collier, Dr Morgan Currie and Dr Benedetta Catanzariti are involved in new research assessing the threat of artificial intelligence (AI) to parliamentary business. 

The academics are part of a research team at the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, evaluating the potential threat of AI technologies to parliamentary businesses and investigating how deepfake videos may affect the integrity of Parliament TV.   

The research team, commissioned by the Scottish Parliament, is assessing how, because of new sophisticated AI technologies, footage from the Scottish parliament’s Debating Chamber and committee rooms could be misused to create convincing deepfakes. Deepfakes are created when a video, image or audio file has been changed using AI to distort someone's words or actions. 

While deceptive videos and audio clips could pose a serious threat to Scottish democracy, the research team have found the parliament is resilient against these kinds of attacks.  

Despite finding many examples of good practice, the team is calling on the Scottish Parliament to go further and put a formal process in place to respond to deepfake threats and allocate more staff to manage the risks of attacks.  

The findings have been published in a new report by Dr Collier, Dr Currie and Dr Catanzariti, titled ‘Chamberfakes: assessing the threats posed by generative AI technologies to parliamentary democracy in Scotland.’ 

In the report, the team identified three main risks including the video livestream being hacked; the dissemination of deepfakes on social media; and the many hours of parliamentary footage being used to create harmful and abusive deepfakes of MSPs.  

Dr Collier, Lecturer in Digital Methods at SPS, said: “Scotland was one of the world’s first parliaments to experiment with live streaming. While the original aim was to produce a neutral record for the public and broadcasters on what goes on inside Holyrood, it paradoxically has introduced new security risks that could threaten public trust in democracy. 

“While the risk of a widespread attack is technically low, we have seen one-off examples of Scottish politicians falling victim to these kinds of attacks such as Maggie Chapman MSP, who was the subject of a deepfake audio clip posted on X that parodied Chamber business.  

“The ramifications of ‘chamberfakes’ are potentially severe but we are optimistic about the Scottish Parliament’s ability to respond to these sorts of attacks in large part due to the skilled broadcasting team who have technical processes and human checks already in place.” 

The authors of the report believe there is always room for improvement, so include three key recommendations to bolster the existing checks and procedures.  

Dr Currie, Senior Lecturer in Data and Society at SPS, said: “At the moment the Scottish Parliament has no formal processes in place to respond to deepfake threats. We recommend a formal intervention plan be put in place and reporting procedure for deepfakes and misinformation introduced and managed by a specific member of staff.  

“Consideration should also be given to developing simple ways of authenticating witnesses and other contributors who dial in remotely to give evidence to parliamentary committees.  

“And our final recommendation is for a new team to be established within the broadcasting unit at the parliament to support those MSPs who encounter or are victims of misinformation who could track how that content is being used while also promoting the use of parliamentary video through communications campaigns and direct engagement with broadcasters and social media platforms.”  

Read the report on the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research website.

Find out more about Science, Technology and Innovation Studies at SPS.