The government has announced plans to collaborate with tech firms, including Microsoft, and other partners to develop tools to combat the unprecedented growth of deepfakes.
The aim is to mitigate the proliferation of harmful AI-generated deepfake content, which the government says is now an “urgent national priority”.
While deepfakes have existed for almost a decade, rapid advances in generative AI in recent years have driven their scale and sophistication across the internet.
As its name suggests, AI technology is used to create images and videos that appear highly realistic but are in fact fake. The ability to create convincing deepfakes quickly and cheaply is available to almost anyone, with little to no technical expertise required.
According to recent government figures, the rise in AI-generated deepfakes has grown from 500,000 shared in 2023 to a projected eight million in 2025.
The government has already banned ‘nudification’ apps, which use generative AI to turn images of real people...