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AI incident ·

Deepfake Recordings Allegedly Influence Slovakian Election

11 news reports Snapshot 7 Sep 2026

In brief

An AI system built and deployed by Unknown allegedly harmed Slovakian Electorate, Monika Todova and 2 others.

Risk domain
Malicious Actors & Misuse Disinformation, surveillance, and influence at scale
Occurred
Coverage
11 reportsSep 2023 - Feb 2024

What happened

Days before Slovakia's election, deepfake audio recordings surfaced, allegedly featuring conversations between a journalist and a leading liberal politician discussing vote-rigging and other controversial topics. The recordings were spread on social media platforms and may have influenced the election outcome, which saw the pro-Russian populist party winning.

Laws that address this harm

Policy angle: Classified under Malicious Actors & Misuse (Disinformation, surveillance, and influence at scale) in the MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy; 5 recorded instruments address this use case.

Matched from the record's risk domain and country to the instruments recorded here. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).

News reports (11)

Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.

  1. En Slovaquie, la désinformation bat son plein à l'approche des législatives
    france24.com · Grégoire Sauvage
  2. Slovakia swamped by disinformation ahead of parliamentary elections
    france24.com · Grégoire Sauvage
  3. Progressive Slovakia becomes target of AI misinformation, tops polls
    euractiv.com · Barbara Zmušková
  4. Trolls in Slovakian election tap AI deepfakes to spread disinformation
    straitstimes.com · Bloomberg
  5. Slovakia’s Election Deepfakes Show AI Is a Danger to Democracy
    wired.com · Morgan Meaker
  6. Umelá inteligencia do volieb zasiahla až na poslednú chvíľu. Bol to len predkrm, nabudúce bude horšie
    zive.aktuality.sk · Martin Hodás
  7. Deepfakes in Slovakia Preview How AI Will Change the Face of Elections
    bloomberg.com · Daniel Zuidijk
  8. Was Slovakia election the first swung by deepfakes?
    thetimes.co.uk · Peter Conradi
  9. Slovakia: Deepfake audio of Denník N journalist offers worrying example of AI abuse
    ipi.media · Karin Kőváry Sólymos
  10. Deepfake Menace Hit Slovak Elections - Transitions
    tol.org · Karin Kovary Solymos
  11. A fake recording of a candidate saying he’d rigged the election went viral. Experts say it’s only the beginning
    cnn.com · Curt Devine, Donie O'Sullivan, Sean Lyngaas

Who was involved

Alleged deployer
Unknown
Alleged developer
Unknown
Alleged harmed party
Slovakian Electorate, Monika Todova, Michal Simecka, Democratic Process In Slovakia

Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)

Causal entity
AI
Intent
Intentional
Timing
Post-deployment
Harm level
—
Sectors
—
Countries
—

Risk entries describing this failure mode

Entries from the MIT AI Risk Repository coded to subdomain 4.1.

  • Political manipulation

    "Political manipulation - Use or misuse of personal data to target individuals’ interests, personalities and vulnerabilities with tailored political messages via micro-advertising or deepfakes/synthetic media."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Coercion/manipulation

    "Coercion/manipulation - Use of a technology system to covertly alter user beliefs and behaviour using nudging, dark patterns and/or other opaque techniques, resulting in potential erosion of privacy, addiction, anxiety/...

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Political and Economic

    "Political and Economic - Manipulation of political beliefs, damage to political institutions and the effective delivery of government services."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Electoral interference

    "Electoral interference - Generation of false or misleading information that can interrupt or mislead voters and/or undermine trust in electoral processes."

    A Collaborative, Human-Centred Taxonomy of AI, Algorithmic, and Automation Harms (Abercrombie2024)

  • Political

    "In the UK, a form of initial computational propaganda has already happened during the Brexit referendum1 . In future, there are concerns that oppressive governments could use AI to shape citizens’ opinions"

    The Rise of Artificial Intelligence - Future Outlooks and Emerging Risks (Allianz2018)

  • Biased influence through citizen screening and tailored propaganda

    "AI-powered chatbots tailor their communication approach to influence individual users' decisions. In the UK, a form of initial computational propaganda has already happened during the Brexit referendum. In future, there...

    The Rise of Artificial Intelligence - Future Outlooks and Emerging Risks (Allianz2018)

  • Surveillance and Censorship

    "Content moderation has emerged as one of the key use-cases of LLMs (Weng et al., 2023), indicating the potential of LLMs for surveillance and censorship as well (Edwards, 2023). Surveillance and censorship are one of th...

    Foundational Challenges in Assuring Alignment and Safety of Large Language Models (Anwar2024)

  • Disinformation and manipulation of public opinion

    "AI, particularly general- purpose AI, can be maliciously used for disinformation (351), which for the purpose of this report refers to false information that was generated or spread with the deliberate intent to mislead...

    International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI (Bengio2024)

Incidents in the same risk subdomain

All incidents in this subdomain

Other incidents involving Unknown

Source record: incident #573 on the AI Incident Database · all 11 reports