Spain’s main opposition, the People’s Party, released a political advertisement that relied on artificial-intelligence techniques to fabricate a video featuring the prime minister’s spouse. The clip was posted on the party’s official social-media channels in the run-up to the national election scheduled for next month and amassed close to two million views within a few days.
The synthetic footage portrayed several figures linked to the governing Socialist party, assigning them statements about illicit conduct. In one segment, a computer-generated version of Begoña Gómez claimed she obtained a university appointment thanks to her husband’s position, while another showed former president José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero alleging he concealed jewellery in a safe. Both lines echoed ongoing investigations that the individuals have publicly denied.
The Socialist party denounced the material, noting its rapid spread online. Spain’s digital transformation minister, Óscar López, told broadcaster TVE that the party’s official accounts were distributing a ‘colossal lie,’ a characterization he described as intolerable for any organization that claims to uphold democratic values in the current political climate.
A former Socialist member, Leire Díez, filed a court complaint alleging defamation and digital identity theft after her likeness appeared in the montage. The filing demanded that the People’s Party remove the advertisement immediately, arguing that the fabricated statements suggested she had colluded with judicial authorities to benefit the governing coalition.
El País consulted nine legal scholars, a majority of whom concluded that the campaign did not breach the law because the video carried a clear AI disclaimer and was presented as satire. Íñigo Navarro, a former dean at Madrid’s Comillas Pontifical University, told the newspaper that the context made it evident the quoted individuals never uttered those words.
Academics have placed the episode within a global push to curb AI-driven misinformation. José Javier Olivas, an associate professor at Spain’s National University for Distance Education, called the tactic ‘truly regrettable’ and described it as a red line for political campaigning, noting that it meets the definition of disinformation. In the United States, a Wesleyan University study identified more than two hundred AI-generated political ads, most of them linked to Republican campaigns ahead of the upcoming midterms.