Scottish Parliament TV at risk of becoming a target for deepfakes, new research says

Experts have urged the Scottish Parliament to improve security measures after finding its livestream service is at risk of being hacked.

A study carried out by the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research and the University of Edinburgh found that the Scottish Parliament TV’s footage is at risk of becoming a target for deepfakes and other online attacks.

Researchers said that the livestream service has “introduced new security risks that could threaten public trust in democracy.”

The study, commissioned by the Scottish Parliament, identified three main risks including the video livestream being hacked, the dissemination of deepfakes on social media, and parliamentary footage being used to create harmful and abusive deepfakes of MSPs.

Co-author of the report, Dr Ben Collier, said: “While the risk of a widespread attack is technically low, we have seen one-off examples of Scottish politicians falling victim to these kinds of attacks such as Maggie Chapman MSP, who was the subject of a deepfake audio clip posted on X that parodied Chamber business.

“The ramifications of ‘chamberfakes’ – deepfakes targeting parliamentary business - are potentially severe but we are optimistic about the Scottish Parliament’s ability to respond to these sorts of attacks in large part due to the skilled broadcasting team who have technical processes and human checks already in place.”

Earlier this year, Holyrood spoke with a Glasgow-born X user, who had been targeting MSPs with deepfakes through content acquired via the Scottish Parliament livestream services.

His deepfakes have targeted numerous MSPs including Scottish Greens MSP Maggie Chapman and the party’s co-leader Patrick Harvie as well as former first minster Humza Yousaf.

He told the magazine he created deepfakes to “take the mickey out of politicians”. 

His most viral video targeted First Minister John Swinney. It has 75,000 views and has been shared more than 180 times on X.

The research team is calling on the parliament to create a formal intervention plan to respond to deepfake threats and allocate more staff to manage the risks of attacks.

They also have urged the parliament to develop methods to authenticate those who dial in remotely to give evidence to parliamentary committees.

Co-author Dr Morgan Currie added: “And our final recommendation is for a new team to be established within the broadcasting unit at the parliament to support those MSPs who encounter or are victims of misinformation who could track how that content is being used while also promoting the use of parliamentary video through communications campaigns and direct engagement with broadcasters and social media platforms.”

For the report, called Chamberfakes: Assessing the threats posed by generative AI technologies to parliamentary democracy in Scotland, the team spoke to staff from the Scottish Parliament, journalists, academics, people working in cybersecurity and video streaming, and an MSP.

During their research they also visited the parliament to observe the video team on days when the parliament was in session and trace the technical chain, practices, and procedures that come together to produce parliamentary business.