Slovakia election hit by AI audio faking a candidate plotting to rig the vote
Two days before Slovakia's 2023 parliamentary vote, a fabricated recording of progressive leader Michal Simecka discussing election fraud spread during the campaign silence period.
- What happenedA fake audio clip purporting to capture Progressive Slovakia leader Michal Simecka and Dennik N journalist Monika Todova discussing how to rig the election, including buying votes from the Roma minority, spread on social media just before the vote.
- MethodAn AI-manipulated audio recording of a conversation that never took place, posted on Telegram and amplified across TikTok, YouTube and Facebook during the pre-election silence period when it was hard to debunk.
What happened
Two days before Slovakia's parliamentary election on 30 September 2023, an audio recording appeared on social media that claimed to capture Michal Simecka, leader of the pro-European Progressive Slovakia party, and journalist Monika Todova of the daily Dennik N talking about how to rig the vote, partly by buying votes from the country's Roma minority.
The conversation never happened. It was a deepfake assembled with the help of artificial intelligence. Both Simecka and Dennik N denied its authenticity, and fact-checkers flagged it, but the clip surfaced during the 48-hour pre-election moratorium, when politicians and media are expected to stay silent, making it difficult to publicly rebut in time. Simecka's party went on to lose to a more Russia-friendly opponent.
Why it matters
The episode became an early, widely cited example of AI-generated audio targeting a democratic election, showing how a synthetic clip timed to a campaign blackout can outrun corrections. Researchers and journalists have pointed to the Slovak case as a warning for elections worldwide, even while cautioning that the deepfake's actual effect on the result cannot be measured.
Sources: HKS Misinformation Review · International Press Institute (IPI) · UNESCO Media and Information Literacy. Further reading in the archive trackers.