A minister is about to give an interview on Newsnight, when the live studio feed is suddenly hacked and he is replaced by an identical replica, voicing the words of a hostile power.
This is the latest storyline in the BBC ’s digital surveillance thriller The Capture, starring Holliday Grainger, Paapa Esseidu and Peter Singh.
But while it may be a TV drama, experts warn the scenes are based on what is possible in real life – and the use of AI-generated video clones, or “deepfakes”, is a genuine and increasing threat to all of us.
Cybersecurity expert Professor Alan Woodward of the University of Surrey says technology used to generate realistic fake videos is moving very quickly.
And he reveals it will soon be impossible to distinguish between real and fake videos, even live ones.
Prof Woodward adds: “What we are seeing on The Capture isn’t far fetched at all, it’s closely based on reality. Deepfakes are real and what the series is showing really well is just how far they’ve come, even since the first series just three years ago.
We’ve now got to the stage where you can use machine learning to create a replica, which is indistinguishable from the real person, and which you can tell what to say and they’ll say it.
“That throws up many interesting scenarios. Do you pay Tom Cruise a million pounds per film, or do you make an avatar of him to do the acting?
"Could we do away with Hugh Edwards on the 10 o’clock news and just have an avatar?
“But it’s difficult to also conclude that such technologies don’t pose a threat to us, on many different levels. The bottom line is, these days people should no longer believe their eyes and ears.”
That threat became clear a month into the war in Ukraine, when a deepfake video appeared on social media of President Volodoymyr Zelensky urging his troops to surrender to Russia.
But while that was quickly flagged as a fake, Prof Woodward fears deepfakes could soon pose real dangers to the West.
He says: “Russia’s main foreign policy objective when it comes to the West is to undermine democracy.
And deepfake technology is a powerful weapon to help them do that.
"When you’re trying to spread disinformation through the written word, such as on Facebook or WhatsApp, people may wonder if it is true. But when people see or hear it, they think it must be true.”
Deepfake videos first appeared on a large scale in 2017, when fake footage started spreading online with the faces of Hollywood stars such as Scarlett Johansson, Emma Watson and Nicolas Cage.
They used a new deep learning method known as generative adversarial networks.
It wasn’t long before the videos were almost indistinguishable from the real person.
Videos which went viral included one of Barack Obama calling Donald Trump a “total and complete dips**t”.
One shows Cruise growling while singing and doing a coin trick in a men’s clothing shop racked up millions of views on TikTok without anyone suspecting it was not the actor.
In 2019 a doctored video of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was even shared by Mr Trump.
US intelligence agencies later warned “adversaries” were likely to use deepfakes to influence the 2020 election campaign.
Within four months, cybersecurity firm Symantec reported three other multinationals had fallen victim to similar ploys.
Others have seized upon the potential of deepfakes as a weapon of mass disinformation, including to undermine political opponents, spread conspiracy theories and destabilise democracy.
A video emerged showing the state governor for Sao Paulo in Brazil – a conservative who defended “family values” - taking part in an orgy.
He claimed the footage was fake, calling it “the worst electoral crime”.
Prof Woodward says this is the flip side of deepfakes – giving public figures caught in a scandal the “ultimate plausible deniability”.
There were 14,678 deepfake videos at the end of 2019, compared with 7,964 nine months figures show.
Prof Woodward claims all the world’s major powers – including the UK – are likely developing increasingly sophisticated deepfake methods as part of their weapons arsenal.
He adds: “I don’t think we’ve seen any Russian or Chinese deepfake attacks to interfere with democracy or elections, and that is probably because they know we could fight back and use it against them too. I suspect that’s what’s deterring them.”
The Capture is on BBC1 tonight at 9pm.
