Orban's opponents targeted by AI-driven disinformation ahead of Hungary's elections

The campaign for Hungary’s April 12 elections has been marred by disinformation. Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s party, Fidesz, has deployed a series of outrageous AI-generated videos to target his main rival Peter Magyar and his Tisza party, while a vast campaign orchestrated by fake accounts has emerged on TikTok and Facebook. In the run-up to crucial elections on April 12, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s party, Fidesz, and its supporters have been sending out false videos, often generated by AI. One of them shows a Hungarian father, supposedly forced to fight for Ukraine, being executed. The message is aimed at Peter Magyar, the pro-European candidate who is threatening to topple Orban after 16 years of unchallenged rule. Orban’s supporters accuse him of wanting to send Hungarians to fight with Ukraine – something he has never said. Other videos aim at showing that Magyar would be a tool of the European Union or that he would cut pensions for elderly Hungarians. Orban is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s closest ally in Europe, raising the possibility that Russia could interfere in this election. But Hungarian fact-checkers say most of the disinformation they have seen is coming directly from Orban’s party and their supporters in Hungary. Szilard Teczar, the editor-in-chief at Hungarian media outlet Lakmusz, told the Observers team: "For many years now, we have a very strong and impactful domestic disinformation ecosystem. I mean the governing party itself, the media connected to the governing party, and proxy organisations of the governing party. They have a better understanding of the local context. So the added value of disinformation coming directly from Russia doesn’t seem to be that huge." A network targeting Orban’s political rival on TikTok There have been cases of disinformation using techniques Russia has used for years, such as fabricating fake reports by real media outlets. In the run-up to the election, an AI-generated disinformation campaign also emerged on TikTok. In a report published on April 3, TikTok said that they had detected six networks, including a total of 400 accounts, attempting to influence the Hungarian elections. Most of these accounts showed support for Orban’s party. Alice Lee is an analyst with NewsGuard, an observatory that works to identify disinformation online. NewsGuard investigated the networks of fake news trying to influence the vote: "There are still undecided voters and Fidesz, Viktor Orban’s party, hopes to sweep them up. So the efforts to influence these voters are intensifying and I think it will only continue to do so as we approach the elections.” NewsGuard shone the light on a pro-Orban manipulation campaign being carried out on TikTok ahead of the elections in its investigation published on March 23. A network of at least 34 Hungarian-language accounts is sharing videos created with AI to discredit Peter Magyar. Alice Lee continues: "We found one account that created AI-generated videos of celebrities Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jake Paul." In these videos, Viktor Orban, nicknamed the "boss”, is portrayed as the embodiment of liberty and stability. His political rival, Peter Magyar, on the other hand, is portrayed as chaotic, while the European Union is presented as a constraint to freedom. One of these videos features an AI-generated image of the actor Johnny Depp speaking to the camera… in Hungarian. Against a Budapest backdrop, AI Johnny says, "With them, it will be chaos in the streets but, thanks to the boss, it’s calm and there are only tourists taking photos.” Other videos show fearful images of what Hungary would apparently be like if run by Magyar and his party, Tisza. One video, for example, features an AI-generated scene of a crowd of protesters surrounded by the police. A voiceover says, “It just takes one bad decision” (implying it could take one bad decision to create chaos in the country). "Lots of the videos show how ‘woke’ culture would come into Hungarian schools with LGBT pride flags and things like that, trying to scare the ageing and conservative voter base that Hungary has,” Lee said. The war in Ukraine also features prominently in these videos. "The videos claim that Peter Magyar will drag Hungary into the conflict, that Hungarians will be mobilised, which, as far as we know, is false,” Lee says. Widely shared videos Some of these videos have gone viral, garnering more than 10 million views on TikTok. They are part of a coordinated movement – in just two days, no less than 22 accounts, all part of the same network, were created. NewsGuard is still unsure who is behind them. Lakmusz published an investigation on March 19 similar to the one carried out by NewsGuard. They identified 17 TikTok accounts using AI-generated videos to discredit Magyar and his party. These are screengrabs of AI-generated videos shared on TikTok that are hostile to the Hungarian political party Tisza and its leader Peter Magyar. Screengrab by Lakmusz. © Lakmusz/ FRANCE 24 Most of the accounts identified by NewsGuard and Lakmusz are now inactive, but new accounts continue to pop up with identical names and ways of operating before they, too, are deleted by the platform. It’s a game of whack-a-mole. Lee says: "People know that they are looking at AI slop, but it still really seeds the idea and the narrative. And AI slop does much better on the TikTok algorithm overall." Magyar and Orban blame opposing sides for election interference The Hungarian Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition have both been speaking out against foreign interference ahead of the April 12 election. Orban blames Ukraine, and Magyar accuses Russia. Magyar took to X on March 10 to denounce the well-oiled disinformation campaign that is targeting him: "In the coming days, Fidesz, with the help of Russian intelligence services, will launch a smear and disinformation campaign previously tested in Moldova, mainly on social media, especially on TikTok." Peter Magyar took to X to speak out against the disinformation campaign targeting him. To display this content from X (Twitter), you must enable advertisement tracking and audience measurement. An investigation by the Financial Times, published on March 11, revealed that the Kremlin approved a plan submitted by a Russian communications consulting agency called Social Design Agency to carry out manipulation campaigns on social media in Hungary ahead of the elections. According to a document viewed by the newspaper, the campaign involved inundating social media with Russian-made content shared by Hungarian celebrities. In the content, Orban would be presented as a “strong leader with global friends”, while Magyar would be described as a “Brussels puppet with no outside support.” It’s impossible to prove who created the fake videos, but the fact-checkers at Lakmusz have found ties to Fidesz. Teczar said: “Around 10 of the originally discovered TikTok channels were following a TikTok channel which is linked to an influencer working for the junior coalition partner of Fidesz. These kinds of mass TikTok campaigns are in the arsenal of Russian groups but I would say I’m quite sure that even if Russia is behind it, it goes through some Hungarian people or entities because the messages are very tailored to the Hungarian audience and the topic of the day.” Lakmusz has also scrutinised the accounts of Magyar and his party Tisza. They have not found any messages created by AI.