Alleged AI-Generated Video by Spain’s People’s Party Results in Diplomatic Fallout with the Dominican Republic

Spain's People's Party (PP) posted an AI-generated attack video depicting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on a beach under the title "The Island of Corruption," a reference to a reality TV show filmed in the Dominican Republic, indirectly linking the country to corruption. The Dominican Foreign Ministry condemned the video as a "vicious attack" for using its national symbols. PP later deleted the post, and Sánchez apologized on behalf of Spain.

Risk classification

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

The AI system was used by a political party to generate propaganda aimed at manipulating public opinion and attacking political opponents at scale.

Additional risk subdomains

• 1.2 Exposure to toxic content: The video was described as a 'vicious and incomprehensible attack' that caused a diplomatic dispute and public outrage.

Causal factors

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

The incident was caused by a political party intentionally creating and posting an AI-generated video to attack political opponents.

EU AI Act risk tier

• Risk tier: 3 Limited Risk

Limited Risk: The report describes an AI system used to generate synthetic content (a deepfake video), which falls under the transparency obligations of the EU AI Act.

AI system and alleged parties

• AI system: None named
• AI purpose: Deepfake Video Generation; Social Media Content Generation
• Behaviour type: Tool
• Alleged developer: Unknown deepfake technology developers
• Alleged deployer: People's Party (Spain), Partido Popular
• Alleged harmed parties: Relations between Spain and the Dominican Republic, Pedro Sánchez, Government of the Dominican Republic, Government of Spain

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 Negligible
• Differential treatment: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Civil rights: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Democracy: direct Minor, indirect Minor
• Privacy: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Psychological: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible
• Epistemic: direct Minor, indirect Negligible
• Child sexual exploitation and abuse: direct Negligible, indirect Negligible

Malicious content

Reported: The report describes an AI-generated video used as a political attack.

Directly caused: The PP posted an AI-generated video titled 'The Island of Corruption' on X, which was viewed over 400,000 times before being deleted.

Democracy

Reported: The report describes the use of AI-generated content in political campaigns to attack opponents.

Directly caused: The PP used an AI-generated video to attack government officials and manipulate public opinion, leading to a diplomatic incident.

Indirectly caused: The incident contributes to the normalization of synthetic media in political campaigns, potentially eroding trust in democratic processes.

Epistemic

Reported: The report describes an AI-generated video depicting real officials in a fabricated scenario.

Directly caused: The video fabricated a scene of Spanish government officials on a beach to associate them with corruption, viewed over 400,000 times.

People affected

• Occurrences reported: 1
• People reportedly harmed: 5
• People reportedly exposed: 400000

Potential causes

Management

• Prioritizing Engagement Over Risks: Party management approved provocative AI video to compete with rivals.

Technology

• Cheap AI Video Generation Tools: AI tools make it easy and cheap to generate realistic parody videos.

Human Factors

• Lack of Cultural Sensitivity: Creators failed to foresee diplomatic impact of using national symbols.
• Targeting Younger Voters: Desire to appeal to youth on social media led to risky content creation.

Process and Methods

• Inadequate Content Review: Lack of internal review before publishing AI-generated political media.

Regulatory Environment

• Lack of AI Campaign Regulations: No clear rules governing AI-generated content in political campaigns.

Information quality

• Classification confidence: High
• Reason for confidence: The report clearly details the creator, platform, content, views, and political/diplomatic consequences of the AI-generated video. There is no ambiguity about the events or the reactions of the involved parties.
• Ambiguities identified: The specific AI tool used to generate the video is not identified.

Spain's conservative People's Party used cheap AI tools to create a political parody video targeting Spain's Prime Minister, which inadvertently triggered a minor diplomatic incident with the Dominican Republic due to the unauthorized use of its national symbols. The incident represents a minor national security impact, highlighting the growing domestic political use of AI-generated synthetic media.

• Overall national security impact: Minor
• Scope: Multiple nations
• Primary target: Spain
• Other affected: Dominican Republic
• Alleged perpetrator: Spanish People's Party

Threat characteristics

• Imminence: Long-term. The immediate incident is resolved, but the underlying trend of cheap AI tools used in political campaigns represents an ongoing concern.
• Autonomy: Human-controlled. The AI system was used purely as a tool by human creators to generate specific video content based on direct prompts.
• Novelty: Established threat. AI-generated deepfakes of politicians are an established threat type, though the resulting diplomatic friction represents a notable escalation.

Impact by dimension

• Physical security: Negligible. No physical security threat, kinetic targeting, or critical infrastructure manipulation occurred.
• Information security: Minor. AI-generated deepfake video targeted national leadership as a political attack, garnering over 400,000 views before deletion.
• Sovereignty: Minor. Caused a minor diplomatic incident between Spain and the Dominican Republic due to the unauthorized use of national symbols in a political parody.
• Economic security: Negligible. No economic or technological security threats were identified in connection with this incident.
• Societal stability: Negligible. No significant threats to societal stability, human rights, or civil liberties were reported.