Slovakia: audio of a party leader and a journalist discussing vote rigging, which a ministry unit said showed signs of AI, spread before the 2023 election
Two days before Slovakia's parliamentary election of 30 September 2023, during the pre-election moratorium, an audio file presented as a phone call between Progressive Slovakia leader Michal Šimečka and Denník N journalist Monika Tódová spread on Facebook, Telegram, TikTok and chain e-mails. In it, the two voices discuss rigging the election in the party's favour. The director of the Interior Ministry's Centre for Countering Hybrid Threats told AFP that the ministry's evaluation found several signs that the recording was created with AI synthetic-voice algorithms trained on real people's voices, and other analysts consulted by AFP said it was an AI-made fake. A former member of parliament shared it as authentic, calling Šimečka a traitor and fraudster. Šimečka called it fake. Tódová filed a criminal complaint for defamation; according to Denník N, police first dismissed it, a prosecutor ordered an investigation, and in 2024 an investigator suspended the case because no suspect could be identified.
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 2 sources · Added 22/10/2026