UK democracy is under “immense and increasing strain” because of disinformation increasingly being spread by artificial intelligence (AI), with just 3 per cent of the public able to very easily tell if an online video is genuine.
Full Fact, the fact-checking charity, said there had been a surge in AI-assisted content in the last year and information had become too easy to manipulate and harder to trust.
It called on ministers to act, including with stronger rules on “political deepfakes” – digitally created or altered content, often in the form of false images, videos and audio recordings – to protect trust in elections.
“As voters in Makerfield prepare to cast their votes in a high-stakes by-election, it’s clear that many people are struggling to decipher fact from fiction, and to have confidence in the information they’re being served,” Full Fact warned in Strengthening the UK's Democratic Information Environment, its annual report for 2026.
The Independent recently revealed that around 16.5 million UK adults, almost one in three, were exposed to political deepfakes in the month before May’s English local elections.
Next week voters will go to the polls in Makerfield for a contest that could decide Britain’s next prime minister if Labour candidate Andy Burnham, who has said he will challenge Sir Keir Starmer, wins the seat.
Full Fact says electoral law needs to catch up with the realities of modern campaigning and that voters should know who is paying for political adverts and when deepfakes are being used. It says the government “missed the chance to strengthen these safeguards before the recent May elections and the Makerfield by-election” but can put them in place before the next general election.
Chris Morris, the chief executive of Full Fact, warned that the UK risks “falling behind” internationally and that “decisions taken now will shape whether future elections are defined by confusion and mistrust or by clarity, confidence and democratic resilience. Other democracies facing similar pressures are beginning to move toward more coordinated approaches built around transparency, preparedness and accountability. The UK risks falling behind if it continues to respond in a piecemeal and reactive way.”
One challenge facing Makerfield and future elections is that voters are increasingly unable to tell what is real and what is synthetic, the charity warned. A poll commissioned by Full Fact and carried out by YouGov at the end of March found that 80 per cent of people are concerned about political misinformation and just 3 per cent find it very easy to tell whether a video online is genuine or AI-generated.
Some 80 per cent of UK adults expressed concern about political misinformation, and nearly half of this group (48 per cent) say political misinformation has affected their trust in institutions, including the government and parliament over the past year. Two-thirds, 66 per cent, believe ministers are doing too little to address AI-generated misinformation.
The report warns that misleading use of genuine information is more common than outright fabrication and certain policy areas, including crime, immigration and the economy, are more frequently associated with misinformation.
On the rise of AI, the charity says that in November 2024 it suspected AI involvement in four of the fact checks it published. By October 2025 this had risen to at least 27. A Full Fact investigation also found examples of AI overviews that repeated debunked claims from social media, made up information about world events, failed to identify AI-generated content or video game footage and “produced contradictory results for identical searches”.
It also warned that information online is “becoming harder to trust, more challenging to navigate and all too easy to manipulate. A healthy democracy depends on the ability of citizens, institutions and communities to understand facts, recognise what is real, reach shared understandings about things that matter, and be able to make informed decisions. This is now under immense and increasing strain.”
The election period just before a vote poses serious challenges, says Full Fact. Even a small number of credible-looking items can “generate uncertainty that outlasts corrections”. It pointed to last year’s presidential election in Ireland when, three days before the vote, a deepfake falsely claimed that a candidate, Catherine Connolly, had withdrawn. Although she was eventually elected, the video attracted hundreds of thousands of views within days.
Full Fact warned that key parts of the system, including AI systems, social media platforms and search engines are only partially regulated, and its report calls for stronger rules to deal with political deepfakes and new laws to prevent misinformation and disinformation in political campaigns. It also wants platforms to be given a duty in law “to support effective media and political literacy”.
Ministers should also boost the powers of the watchdog, the Electoral Commission, to investigate and create a comprehensive public library of political adverts. The report also found that more proactive communication to tackle disinformation could work. It cited the aftermath of the Liverpool parade crash in May 2025, when Merseyside Police published details about the suspect’s nationality and ethnicity earlier than it might have done in the past.
Full Fact’s full report can be read here
