Australia’s first satirical deepfake political advertisement was rolled out during the Queensland election.

Right-wing advocacy group Advance Australia posted a video using footage of Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk giving a press conference with a message saying: "If politicians were honest". However, the poor quality and strangely lit computer generated face gave it away as a fake video.

The creators make it comical and clear that the footage isn’t real – the video is captioned with a spoonerised version of the premier’s name: “Watch this fake press conference from Pannastacia Alaszczuk”. It also has a strap saying “not the LABOR PREMIER OF QLD”, and it concludes with a graphic saying “NOT ACTUALLY THE PREMIER OF QLD”. The fake Palaszczuk says "the state was well and truly cooked before the virus (covid-19) came along," and continued by saying "If you want to get rid of us I completely understand."

The advertisements were seen somewhere between 900,000 and 1 million times on social media, but it is unclear as to whether the video contravenes Meta's Manipulated Media policy, which bans a video that has been “edited or synthesized, beyond adjustments for clarity or quality, in ways that are not apparent to an average person, and would likely mislead an average person to believe that a subject of the video said words that they did not say”.

Who created the deepfake?

Advance Australia

Was the content disclosed as a deepfake?

Yes

Was the deepfake consensual?

No

How was the deepfake created?

Deepfake Software
Reface
Video Editing