Bill C-25 has received royal assent, officially amending the Canada Elections Act to ban AI-generated imitations of real people, also known as deepfakes, of political figures.
The news: Also known as The Strong and Free Elections Act, Bill C-25 contains multiple amendments intended to strengthen the electoral process. This includes “banning sophisticated deepfakes of electoral actors that intend to mislead Canadians.”
The act makes it illegal to create or distribute an image or voice imitation that is likely to be mistaken for a political figure, like candidates, party leaders, or the chief electoral officer, with the intent to mislead. The act does carve out a defence for imitations with the intent of parody or satire.
From the source: “Deepfakes, synthetic media, and AI-generated disinformation are reshaping the information environment in which people live and in which democratic debate takes place,” reads a section of Canada’s AI Strategy. “This has direct implications for elections, public discourse, and trust in institutions.”
Following the thread: Previously, the Canada Elections Act’s anti-impersonation measures only applied to someone who falsely represented themselves or someone else to be an individual (like a political candidate) with the intent to mislead. It did not cover a scenario where a party leader’s voice or image is manipulated to make it appear that they say or do things that they never said or did. The key difference, and the loophole C-25 is closing, is that a deepfake manipulator cannot directly represent themselves as the candidate.
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Final thought: Earlier this year, foreign affairs deputy minister David Morrison and national security adviser Nathalie Drouin warned a parliamentary committee that deepfakes were likely to impact Canada’s next election. Facebook has already been overrun with deepfakes of Prime Minister Mark Carney; some videos promote investment schemes into assets like crypto, while others promote disinformation, such as a video where a deepfaked Carney appears to call for a ban on cars.
The technology previously infiltrated Slovakia’s election in 2023 with fabricated distasteful remarks from Progressive Slovakia leader Michal Simecka, and the United States in 2024, when a robocaller using the deepfaked voice of then-president Joe Biden urged people in New Hampshire to not to vote in the state’s presidential primary.
Feature image courtesy Unsplash. Photo by Aleksandr Galenko.