DA says – NBC10 Philadelphia

Federal officials are working to determine who created a fake video showing ballots being destroyed in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, investigators said.

The video – which appears to show a worker tearing up ballots with a vote for Donald Trump for president – has been making the rounds on social media. The Bucks County District Attorney’s Office said the incident never happened and the video was fake.

“Our investigation has determined that the video was faked to undermine confidence in the upcoming election,” a spokesperson for the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office wrote.

Prosecutors said the FBI is currently investigating the source of the produced video.

Shyam Sundar, the director of Penn State University’s Center for Socially Responsible Artificial Intelligence, told NBC10 fake political videos not only fuel distrust in the electoral process, but could also lead to violence.

“What happens is that anyone with a computer and a camera can easily manipulate images. And the unfortunate thing is that fake videos are much more credible than fake texts,” said Sundar. “It can and has had an impact on elections around the world. Several elections have been affected by this deepfake technology, particularly in Brazil and South America.”

Sundar told NBC10 that when we’re inundated with information on social media, it’s difficult to distinguish truth from lies – especially with videos.

“People react very immediately and violently when they see it with their own eyes, and they tend not to believe their own eyes,” Sundar said.

The Bucks County Board of Elections and the Bucks County Republican and Democratic offices each issued statements denouncing the fake video.

We’ve seen the video circulating online showing someone, supposedly in Bucks County, tearing up ballots containing votes for President Donald Trump. We immediately worked with our attorneys, as well as attorneys for the Trump campaign, to investigate this. Bucks County…

– Bucks GOP (@BucksGOP) October 24, 2024