Deepfake Video Featured Fictitious News Anchors Discussing Venezuela's Economy

Video featuring fictitious news anchors was created using Synthesia to allegedly spread disinformation about Venezuela's economy on social media and Venezuelan state-run broadcast.

Risk classification

• Primary risk domain: 4 Malicious actors
• Primary risk subdomain: 4.1 Disinformation, surveillance, and influence at scale

The incident involves a coordinated, state-sponsored campaign using AI-generated avatars to spread political disinformation and manipulate public opinion at scale in Venezuela.

Additional risk subdomains

• 3.1 False or misleading information: The AI avatars were used to generate specific false narratives and misleading economic data regarding Venezuela's carnival tourism and baseball revenues.

Causal factors

• Entity: Human
• Intent: Intentional
• Timing: Post-deployment

The incident was caused by human actors (the Venezuelan government and its supporters) intentionally using Synthesia's deployed AI platform to generate and spread political propaganda.

EU AI Act risk tier

• Risk tier: 3 Limited Risk

Limited Risk: The report describes the creation of deepfakes and AI-generated video content, which under the EU AI Act are subject to specific transparency obligations to ensure users are informed that the content is synthetic.

AI system and alleged parties

• AI system: Synthesia
• AI purpose: Deepfake Video Generation; Voice Generation
• Behaviour type: Tool
• Alleged developer: Synthesia
• Alleged deployer: unknown
• Alleged harmed parties: Venezuelan people, social media users

Harm severity

Severity ratings are based on this scale.

Highest direct severity in any category: Minor. Severity is scored from Negligible to Catastrophic in each harm category, for harm the reports describe as caused directly or indirectly by the AI system.

• Physical: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Infrastructure: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Property: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Financial: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Environmental: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Malicious content: direct Minor, indirect Minor
• Differential treatment: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Civil rights: direct Negligible, indirect Minor
• Democracy: direct Minor, indirect Minor
• Privacy: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Psychological: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Epistemic: direct Minor, indirect Minor
• Child sexual exploitation and abuse: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible

Malicious content

Reported: The report explicitly describes malicious political propaganda content created and spread directly by the incident.

Directly caused: AI-generated videos featuring fake news anchors were created and distributed on YouTube, TikTok, and state television, receiving hundreds of thousands of views.

Indirectly caused: The state-sponsored propaganda apparatus amplified these videos across social media networks using automated accounts and paid promoters.

Inferred additional harm: It is likely that millions of social media users in Venezuela and internationally were exposed to this synthetic propaganda content.

Civil rights

Reported: The report describes how the incident was used to support an authoritarian government that clamps down on dissent and restricts access to independent news.

Indirectly caused: The AI-generated propaganda supported the Venezuelan regime's broader efforts to restrict citizens' civil rights to access free, uncensored, and reliable information.

Inferred additional harm: The campaign likely contributed to the ongoing suppression of democratic dissent and civil liberties by reinforcing state-controlled narratives.

Democracy

Reported: The report explicitly describes the erosion of democratic norms and the manipulation of public opinion through state-sponsored AI propaganda.

Directly caused: The Venezuelan government used AI-generated news reports to muddle international debate and mislead the domestic population about the country's economic reality.

Indirectly caused: The campaign weakened democratic discourse by polluting the information ecosystem with highly convincing synthetic news designed to discredit the political opposition.

Inferred additional harm: The successful deployment of synthetic media by an authoritarian regime likely encourages further erosion of democratic accountability and electoral integrity.

Epistemic

Reported: The report explicitly describes severe epistemic harm, including the fabrication of news reports and the erosion of shared truth.

Directly caused: The AI system was used to fabricate entire news segments, creating non-existent English-speaking anchors who presented false data about hotel occupancy and baseball revenues.

Indirectly caused: The viral spread of these videos on TikTok, YouTube, and state TV created confusion, making it harder for citizens in an already censored environment to distinguish real news from fake.

Inferred additional harm: The incident likely increased systemic public distrust in all digital media, further degrading the shared consensus reality for Venezuelans.

People affected

• Occurrences reported: 1
• People reportedly exposed: 100000

Potential causes

Management

• Inadequate Risk Mitigation: Company did not anticipate political misuse of realistic news-anchor avatars.
• Permissive Initial Policies: Restrictions on news-style content were only implemented after the incident.

Technology

• Generative AI Deep Learning: Deep learning algorithms generated highly convincing talking human avatars.
• Realistic Text to Speech: Synthetic accents and voices were perfectly synchronized with avatar mouth movements.
• Lack of Built-in Watermarks: Initial software versions lacked digital watermarks to identify content as AI.

Data Inputs

• User-Generated Scripts: Malicious actors inputted custom written scripts containing fake news narratives.
• Real Actor Digital Twins: The catalog of avatars used images of real actors, raising perceived realism.

Human Factors

• Target Audience Susceptibility: Censored populations lacked access to reliable news to verify the stories.
• Malicious Intent of Clients: Chavismo actors systematically exploited the tool to produce propaganda.
• Difficulty in Manual Detection: Average users could not easily spot subtle errors in the realistic avatars.

Process and Methods

• Insufficient Screening Process: Internal screening failed to prevent bad actors from registering and using tools.
• Small Content Moderation Team: The moderation team was too small to review the volume of videos generated.
• Delayed Video Removal: Videos were only flagged after they had already gone viral on social media.

Regulatory Environment

• Widespread Media Censorship: State-controlled blocking of independent news created an information desert.
• Lack of Deepfake Regulations: No legal frameworks existed to restrict synthetic state-sponsored propaganda.

Information quality

• Classification confidence: High
• Reason for confidence: The reports provide consistent, detailed accounts of the Venezuelan government's use of Synthesia's software to create fake news videos, including the specific names of the avatars, the platforms used for distribution, and the response from the AI developer.

The Venezuelan government utilized commercial generative AI technology to create synthetic news anchors that broadcast state-aligned propaganda. This incident represents a significant evolution in state-sponsored information warfare, leveraging deepfake technology to manipulate domestic and international public opinion in a highly restricted media environment.

• Overall national security impact: Substantial
• Scope: Single nation
• Primary target: Venezuela
• Alleged perpetrator: Venezuelan government and state-aligned actors

Threat characteristics

• Imminence: Long-term. The campaign is an ongoing strategic concern regarding the normalization of synthetic propaganda by state actors rather than an active crisis requiring immediate kinetic response.
• Autonomy: Human-controlled. The AI software acted as a tool to generate videos based on direct scripts provided and controlled entirely by human operators.
• Novelty: Evolved capability. Represents a significant evolution in state-sponsored propaganda techniques by integrating commercial generative video technology to fabricate news, but builds on established disinformation tactics.

Impact by dimension

• Physical security: Negligible. The incident was purely informational and did not target, damage, or compromise any physical systems, critical infrastructure, or human safety.
• Information security: Substantial. State-sponsored campaign used highly realistic AI-generated news anchors to spread sophisticated propaganda, muddying international and domestic debate. However, it did not compromise classified intelligence systems or national security networks.
• Sovereignty: Minor. While the campaign served to bolster an authoritarian regime and mislead citizens, it operated within the domestic borders of Venezuela and did not disrupt constitutional processes or target foreign sovereignty.
• Economic security: Negligible. The video content falsely claimed economic growth and tourism booms, but the incident itself did not attack financial systems, critical supply chains, or steal strategic technology.
• Societal stability: Substantial. The state-sponsored campaign systematically polluted the domestic information ecosystem, contributing to the ongoing suppression of civil liberties and restricting citizens' rights to access reliable, uncensored information.