Social Influences on Deepfake Advancement and Regulation in the Political Sphere

The STS research paper deals with Deepfakes, synthetic pieces of media, and their impact on the political sphere in the wake of the 2024 United States Presidential Election. There are rising concerns in public mistrust in visual social media, rapidly growing accuracies in Deepfakes, governmental corruption, and upheaval of national democracy. This paper will analyze real-world examples of Deepfakes in the political field, potential risks of their rising concern in society and current and proposed. regulatory responses. Through this, we can propose strategies for mitigating the harmful effects of Deepfakes while preserving the integrity of democratic processes and public trust.
Studies find that the less political knowledge and digital literacy a person has, the less likely they are to be able to identify a DeepFake and other sources of misinformation. Other studies call attention to the rapid growth of DeepFake accuracies, and their increasing prevalence in social media. Another study touches on impacts of DeepFakes at critical moments, and the judgment of a candidate’s character. Regulations in DeepFake navigate a narrow boundary. Anti-regulators bring up infringement of public speech rights and difficulty of accountability. Pro-regulators argue about illegal impersonation of a candidate or using private data to create the technologies. Ultimately, Deepfakes have, and will continue, to play a huge role in political elections from a variety of factors.

School of Engineering and Applied Science

Bachelor of Science in Computer Science

STS Advisor: Pedro Francisco, Travis Elliott