James Ball is a fellow at Tech Policy Press.A voter leaves a polling station as voting continues in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election on October 8, 2026 in London, England. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)The United Kingdom’s election watchdog is developing an AI-powered system designed to notify candidates of significant deepfakes within three hours of posting to social media, the organization’s chief executive said.In wide-ranging comments at a panel discussion at the Conservative Party’s annual conference last week, Vijay Rangarajan, the chief executive of the Electoral Commission, also warned of persistent hacking and phishing attacks against the regulator and said it had detected signs of “algorithmic bias” — a form of electoral interference that would likely require the involvement of a social media company itself — in at least one UK election.The Electoral Commission is the UK’s independent regulator which enforces laws on donations to political parties, political advertising, and other legislation around the administration and conduct of elections. Rangarajan, a former diplomat who served as the UK’s ambassador to Brazil, has been its CEO since 2024, but public interventions from him — outside of evidence sessions to the UK parliament — are relatively rare.On the panel, Rangarajan cited a deepfake video circulated during Ireland’s 2025 presidential election that falsely depicted candidate Catherine Connolly announcing that the election had been called off and…

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