Chinese Regime Used AI and TikTok to Meddle in Taiwan’s 2024 Elections: Experts

Confetti flies over the stage and crowd as Taiwan's Vice President and presidential-elect from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Lai Ching-te (Centre L) and his running mate Hsiao Bi-khim (Centre R) speak to supporters at a rally at the party's headquarters on January 13, 2024 in Taipei, Taiwan. Annabelle Chih/Getty Images

The Chinese regime used a combination of content generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and social media platforms, including TikTok, in an attempt to sway voters in January’s elections in Taiwan, according to Taiwanese experts.

On April 10, Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies hosted a panel featuring five experts from Taiwan to discuss tools used by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to meddle in the elections, which saw the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP’s) Lai Ching-te elected president with more than 5.5 million votes, or about 40 percent of the total votes cast.

Eve Chiu, CEO and editor-in-chief of the Taipei-based nonprofit Taiwan FactCheck Center, said during the event that there had been more AI-generated audio clips, video clips, and texts during the 2024 election season than in the past.

While some were “cheap fakes,” which are fake content made with conventional software or technology, some were “very sophisticated and very hard to debunk,” she said.

Mr. Lai was the subject of a deepfake video created by a malicious actor using “old image manipulation techniques and new deepfake tools,” according to a report published by the Taiwan FactCheck Center in December 2023. The actor distorted Mr. Lai’s public talk, making it appear as if he were praising his political opponents. The center explained that it was able to determine the video was fake because Mr. Lai’s voice and lip movements didn’t match.

The CCP has called Mr. Lai a “separatist,” a label that the communist regime gives to individuals who favor an independent Taiwan and reject Chinese rule. In other words, his victory is believed to be a blow to Beijing because the Chinese regime has traditionally favored candidates seeking Taiwan’s public offices who have a friendly view of their communist neighbor.

Ms. Chiu highlighted a deepfake video that purported to show Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) endorsing Mr. Lai and his running mate, Hsiao Bi-Khim. She explained that the footage in the fake video originated from a 2022 interview during which the congressman talked about a number of issues, including Ukraine, but said nothing about Taiwan’s presidential election.

“Wittman’s voice in the fake video differed from his genuine voice in the 2022 interview. The lip movements sometimes did not align with the talk, either,” the Taiwan FactCheck Center stated in an article published in February. It added that the fake video “was most likely uploaded by a TikTok private account” before being posted on other online platforms, including Facebook.

Ms. Chiu said there were also false online claims about “electoral fraud” involving vote counting, with YouTube and TikTok being the “primary platforms” spreading these claims.

In a February article about the false claims of election fraud, the Taiwan FactCheck Center said that some claims suggested that the DPP had used “special ink and ballot boxes with secret openings” to illegally boost vote counts. Another claim was that the United States would help the DPP “cheat the election.”

“The purpose of these rumors was to seed doubts about the fairness of the electoral process prior to the election,” the article stated.

Aside from electoral fraud, another narrative driven by Chinese influence operations was meant to incite fear about a looming war between China and Taiwan, according to Ms. Chiu, who said that China was trying to sway Taiwanese voters into believing that voting for a certain party could avoid the war.

Liu Wen-ping, a member of Taiwan’s Ministry of Justice Investigation Bureau, said at the event that the CCP had used local human “collaborators” in Taiwan to disseminate its messages. Working with collaborators outside China has been part of the regime’s cognitive warfare practice, he said.

“The biggest tactic that the PRC [is] deploying right now is co-opting domestic voices of Taiwan or any other country that they’re trying to influence, or cultivating unofficial personalities or brands that disguise state-sponsored voices as independent voices,” Yu Chihhao, co-director of the Taiwan Information Environment Research Center, said at the event.