Election campaign in Spain: AI-generated video of the Prime Minister's wife causes an uproar in Spain

An AI-generated video distributed by the conservative Partido Popular (PP) has sparked outrage and debate about artificial intelligence in Spain. General elections will take place in Spain at the end of November.

The video circulating on social media shows deepfakes of several people close to left-wing Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, including his wife Begoña Gómez. In the artificially created video, a person modeled after Gómez can first be seen speaking into the camera. She says: "If it's left-wing that I have a professorship because my husband is the president, then yes, then I'm left-wing."

At the bottom of the video there is a note in small and almost transparent font that it was created using artificial intelligence. “It is very easy for anyone who is not familiar with AI to confuse this video with reality,” criticized López. "And call me crazy, but this seems extremely serious to me."

According to media reports, a person whose deepfake appears in the video has filed a lawsuit against the PP.

There is also criticism of the video from science. “It is really unfortunate that the official account of a party that claims to want to govern and revive democracy is using AI-generated deepfakes in its election campaign,” wrote political scientist José Javier Olivas Osuna on X. He researches populism, conspiracy theories and AI biases.

The PP dismissed the criticism. "If there had been a malicious intention to make people believe that the characters appearing there were real, then we would have a problem," the party's Borja Sémper told Spanish reporters. But everyone understands that the video uses digital tools "to expose the hypocrisy with which the Socialist Party operates."