The video and the reactions
Spain's main opposition party, the conservative People's Party (PP), this week released on its social media channels a campaign ad built with artificial intelligence. The video manipulates the likenesses of several people linked to Pedro Sánchez's Socialist Party, making them appear to admit to acts such as soliciting prostitutes and receiving bribes. According to the source, by Friday it had surpassed nearly two million views.
In the video, an AI-generated version of the prime minister's wife, Begoña Gómez, talks about a university post obtained thanks to her husband's work, while a deepfake of former Socialist prime minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero alludes to jewels hidden in a safe. The source specifies that both references relate to ongoing investigations, in which Gómez and Zapatero have denied any wrongdoing. The Minister for Digital Transition, Óscar López, called the content a colossal lie, unacceptable if disseminated by a party on its official accounts, and warned that people unfamiliar with AI can easily mistake the video for reality.
The legal challenge and the PP's defense
On Friday, one of the people whose image was used, former Socialist figure Leire Díez, filed a court complaint seeking the immediate removal of the ad. According to the source, in the complaint she accuses the PP of defamation and digital identity theft for using her likeness to allude to alleged attempts to obstruct the judiciary and law enforcement in favor of the Socialists.
The PP rejects the criticism. Borja Sémper told journalists that there would be no problem if there were a malicious intent to make the characters seem real, but that anyone can see that this is a use of digital tools to highlight the Socialist Party's hypocrisy. The source also reports that most polls indicate a PP victory in the 29 November general election, with the need to rely on the far-right Vox party to form a government.
The line between legality and appropriateness
At the bottom, in very small and almost transparent lettering, the video states that it was created with AI. The legal assessment focuses on this: the majority of the nine legal experts consulted by the newspaper El País agree that the PP's operation is not illegal, given the labeling and the overall tone of political satire; according to Íñigo Navarro, it is clear in context that those people did not utter those phrases.
Criminal law professor Juan Antonio Lascuraín, however, distinguishes the question of legality from that of ethical and political appropriateness. José Javier Olivas, a scholar of populism and AI bias, describes the use of deepfakes in the campaign by a party aspiring to govern as deplorable, speaks of a red line compared with the normal conduct of campaigns, and labels the content disinformation because it puts words in other people's mouths. It remains to be seen how Díez's complaint is resolved and what consequences it may have for the political debate in the weeks before the vote.
