I was travelling abroad earlier this week when I received a phone call from a friend asking me if it was true that I had joined the ANC. This wasn’t the first time I had received this inquiry. Almost every day for the last fortnight someone has called or messaged me to fact-check this story.
It didn’t take long for me to figure out that some disinformation machine has decided to take an interest in my political career — though for what reason I can’t fathom. Whatever the source of this bizarre claim, it was convincing enough that my closest friends and family felt compelled to call me to verify it.
Real or fake? Fact-check. Post-truth. Disinformation. Deepfake. Every day it seems that discerning fact from fiction is increasingly difficult. My tendency is to focus on the opportunities that technology can bring to benefit modern society. The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) has already led to remarkable breakthroughs in health care, education, disaster forecasting and other fields. But the threat that generative AI poses to our democracies can no longer be ignored.
AI has long been embraced as a tool of deception and propaganda in politics. With just a few prompts on any one of thousands of available platforms, users can generate fictional statements, images and videos, and pass them off as genuine. However, to date, many of these creations have been crude imitations of reality.
Take Elon Musk’s image of Kamala Harris with a gold Soviet sickle emblazoned across her red hat. Or the numerous videos of Ibrahim Traoré’s “battlefield heroics” on YouTube. But the latest offerings from OpenAI (Sora) or Google (Veo 3) make it clear that just about anyone can now create polished, realistic disinformation productions.
For women, the threat of gendered disinformation poses a particular threat to their participation in politics and elected leadership. Earlier this year, Futurelect collaborated with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy to produce a report detailing the “Cost of Politics in South Africa”. This report outlines not only the financial costs of running an electoral campaign, but the psychological and social factors as well.
A particular statement, where an interviewed candidate reflects on her experience during the 2024 general elections, has lingered in my mind: “Running for office is expensive, but for women, it’s more than money. It’s safety, it’s family, it’s respectability, it's fighting battles that men don’t even see.”
Corroborated by research from leading think-tanks and research institutions, this statement highlights the gender-specific toxicity that women politicians, business leaders, actors, sportspeople and representatives from countless other industries face on a daily basis across the globe.
Last year, Tech Policy Press found that “96% of deepfakes online depict women in non-consensual pornography”. The EU's Parliament Magazine revealed how Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, former UK deputy prime minister Angela Rayner and Germany's former foreign minister (and forthcoming president of the UN General Assembly) Annalena Baerbock have been targets of digital deepfake campaigns.
The bottom line is that the threat of violence and deepfake harassment is already deterring women from entering political races
Taking this research further, academics from the University of Copenhagen and King’s College London discovered that online attacks against women politicians were often perceived as being carried out with the explicit intention of hindering female political participation.
From deepfake videos to doxxing (publishing private information about an individual, such as their home address or phone number) to dogpiling (large groups working together to post harmful content about a specific individual), this rising tide of digital abuse threatens to silence women’s voices and deter their presence in political contests.
Recent trends suggest that this digital backlash is succeeding. In South Africa, the 2021 local government elections saw women’s representation in local council positions plummet from 48% in 2016 to 24.2%. Over the same period, representation in ward seats fell from 33% to 12.7%. At the national level, women’s representation in the National Assembly fell from 46% to 42.8% between 2019 and 2024.
The bottom line is that the threat of violence and deepfake harassment is already deterring women from entering political races; often out of fear of reputational damage, family shame and public humiliation. In a typical scenario, at the point when a victim of digital political violence may seek legal recourse, the damage has already been done. Images have been shared. Relationships have been destroyed.
There should be justice for those whose lives and careers are upended by the creators and distributors of such deepfake content.
Simultaneously, to compensate for the far-reaching damage of this new form of digital harassment, greater funding must be allocated to encourage more women to participate in political activities. Taking these steps will help to fortify our democracy, fighting off malicious actors and cybercriminals who wield technology to drive women out of their rightful seat at the table.
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