DeepfakeMedium
Purported Deepfake Mimicking RTÉ Broadcast Falsely Announced Irish Presidential Candidate Catherine Connolly's Withdrawal
- Occurred
- Oct 22, 2025
- Published
- Oct 22, 2025
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
A purported deepfake video circulated online that is alleged to have falsely depicted Irish presidential candidate Catherine Connolly announcing her withdrawal from the race. The clip reportedly mimicked an RTÉ news broadcast and spread across social media before being reported to the Electoral Commission. Connolly reportedly condemned the video as a malicious attempt to mislead voters and undermine democratic trust.
Developers
- Deepfake technology developers
- Synthetic audio generation technology developers
Deployers
- Unknown malicious actors impersonating Catherine Connolly
- Malicious actors
Harmed parties
- Voters in Ireland
- RTÉ
- General public of Ireland
- Epistemic integrity
- Catherine Connolly
- Democratic integrity
Classification
Category confidence: 95%
Severity confidence: 90%
Rationale: Synthetic media used to deceive voters and spread misinformation about a political candidate.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8