“Don’t worry Ursula, I always choose the left side,” the fake Magyar says, grinning at the camera as the car heads toward signs for war and taxes.
Magyar said Tuesday more organized campaigns to discredit him are coming.
‘New shiny tool’
Since Hungary’s election campaign kicked off this year, disinformation has been ripe and AI labeling has not been consistently enforced, said Botond Feledy, a non-resident fellow at the Centre for Euro-Atlantic Integration and Democracy, a Budapest-based think tank.
As Orbán’s allies portray Magyar as a stooge of Brussels, they are also taking aim at anti-misinformation efforts from the bloc. | Balint Szentgallay/NurPhoto via Getty Images
“EU actors even at the political level hardly picked a fight with Orban on domestic disinformation, not to mention any official measures,” Feledy said.
Szilárd Teczár, the editor-in-chief of fact-checking organization Lakmusz, said a group called the National Resistance Movement has “repeatedly published AI-generated videos targeting the opposition Tisza Party and its leader Péter Magyar.” The movement’s owner is the pro-government influencer network Megafon.
Teczár said the overarching narrative is that if the government loses the election, Brussels and Magyar’s Tisza party would “prioritize the needs of Ukraine, take money away from Hungarians,” and drag the country into the war with Russia.