Taiwan’s countermeasures against deepfakes as AI-driven disinformation campaigns and crimes proliferate

As AI accelerates the creation of hyper-realistic deepfakes, Taiwan — already on the frontlines of information warfare — is stepping up legal, technological, and civic defenses to counter a rapidly evolving global threat.

A new frontier in cybersecurity threats

AI has ushered in a new era of digital manipulation in which fabricated images, videos, and audio — commonly known as deepfakes — can convincingly imitate reality. Experts warn that the technology is transforming the landscape of disinformation, political influence campaigns, and cybercrime.

According to the World Economic Forum, AI-driven cognitive manipulation is poised to become one of the defining risks of the coming years. In its recent analysis of global disinformation trends, the organization cautions that deepfakes are increasingly being used to distort public perception, amplify propaganda, and erode trust in democratic institutions.

Such technologies enable malicious actors to fabricate speeches, impersonate public figures, or produce falsified visual evidence that can spread rapidly across social media. As the cost of producing these manipulations falls and their realism improves, distinguishing truth from fabrication has become progressively more difficult.

For Taiwan, a vibrant democracy facing persistent pressure from disinformation campaigns, the stakes are particularly high.

A wake-up call: Taiwan’s high-profile deepfake case

The dangers of deepfake technology became starkly visible in Taiwan through a high-profile criminal case that drew widespread public attention.

A Taiwanese YouTuber used deepfake software to superimpose the faces of politicians, celebrities, and internet personalities onto pornographic videos, and distributed them online for profit. Investigators later found that 119 individuals had been victimized, while the perpetrators generated more than NT$13.38 million (roughly US$420,000) in illegal profits.

In 2024, the case resulted in a five-year prison sentence after the Supreme Court rejected the defendant’s appeal.

The scandal sparked outrage across Taiwan not only because of the severe reputational damage inflicted on victims, but also because it demonstrated how easily AI could be weaponized to exploit individuals and undermine trust in digital media.

Taiwan’s experience gains international attention

Taiwan’s experience confronting digital manipulation, particularly deepfakes, has begun attracting global interest. In December 2025, Ambassador-at-Large and former minister of Digital Affairs Audrey Tang (唐鳳) was invited to share Taiwan’s strategies for countering deepfakes and disinformation in Japan.

According to Taiwan’s Central News Agency, Tang noted that Taiwan has adopted a legal approach requiring platform operators to share liability for damages, a measure that has significantly reduced the number of such cases.

For countries now grappling with the same phenomenon, Taiwan’s early exposure to coordinated information operations — particularly during election cycles — has effectively turned the island into a testing ground for democratic resilience in the digital age.

Expert warns of expanding cognitive warfare

Mike Kuo (郭正光), a food scientist who spent around four decades working with NASA, told TCN that he believes deepfake technology will increasingly be used as a tool for psychological and information warfare.

“Deepfake technology can easily be weaponized for disinformation campaigns, rumor-spreading, and cognitive manipulation,” Kuo said. “With AI’s assistance, fabricated images, videos, and narratives can spread faster and appear more convincing than ever.”

Kuo warned that such tactics could be amplified by geopolitical actors seeking to shape public opinion in Taiwan. 

“In recent years we have seen increasingly aggressive disinformation efforts, including narratives designed to undermine trust in the US or suggest Taiwan has been abandoned,” he said.

“When young people lack the ability to analyze and verify information critically, they can become vulnerable to manipulation.” To address the challenge, Kuo emphasized the importance of media literacy and civic education.

Schools and civic organizations, he argued, should offer courses that help citizens, especially Taiwanese youths, understand Taiwan’s geopolitical environment and develop stronger skills for identifying disinformation and misinformation.

He shared that a group of Taiwanese Americans that he belongs to has been hosting such courses and summer camps. He added that instructors of these events include, among others, prominent scholars at top-tier universities and Washington-based think tanks who have been working on countering deepfakes as early as the 2010s.

“Taiwan’s democracy and freedoms were not handed down effortlessly,” he said. “If people do not actively safeguard them, they can be eroded through deception and propaganda.”

Crime and identity theft in the deepfake era

Prosecutors in Taiwan are also confronting the criminal applications of deepfake technology. Wayne Lo Wei-yuan (羅韋淵), head prosecutor at the Anti-Money Laundering Office of the Executive Yuan, Taiwan’s highest administrative body, described cases in which international fraud rings used synthetic identities to deceive victims.

Lo said at a lecture held on March 9 that, in one investigation, a Nigerian criminal syndicate employed deepfake techniques to impersonate a well-known Brazilian physician and author in romance scams targeting elderly Taiwanese women.

One victim could not believe it was a scam and continued trying to send money even after authorities intervened to explain that the individual she believed she was communicating with did not exist. This shows how psychologically persuasive these fabricated identities can be, Lo explained.

Asked what individuals should do when faced with deepfake-based scams, Lo told TCN that families should establish unique “verification codes” — phrases known only to close relatives — to confirm someone’s identity if suspicious video calls or voice messages arise.

He said that such verification codes ought to be ones that could not be identified through web crawling or open-source intelligence.

He also described how fraud networks frequently rely on complex money-transfer schemes. Victims may be instructed to leave cash in designated locations, where low-level operatives collect the funds under the watch of other accomplices.

“Even when police catch these individuals, they are often only the lowest-level participants,” Lo explained. “The real masterminds remain hidden.”

He added that since Taiwan is as a founding member of Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) and an economy highly dependent on global trade, Taiwan places great importance on APG mutual evaluations, which assess the implementation and effectiveness of anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing measures.

“As a result,” he said. “Taiwan must effectively tackle deepfakes and other forms of fraud.”

 “Seeing Is No Longer Believing”

Pierre Yang Tzu-pao (楊子葆), a former acting foreign minister of Taiwan, echoed similar concerns about the implications of AI-generated media. 

“In the age of AI, seeing is no longer believing,” Yang told TCN.

He noted that advanced tools can fabricate realistic speeches or video appearances by global political figures such as US President Donald Trump and former US president Barack Obama.

This represents a serious challenge for both national security and criminal investigations, he explained.

“While face-to-face interactions still provide a level of authenticity, deepfake videos can spread online almost instantly and reach millions of people, a quality that face-to-face interactions do not possess.”

The advancement of AI and the speed and scale of digital distribution, Yang added, mean that a single manipulated clip could deceive even highly knowledheable specialists and influence political narratives or public sentiment before fact-checking mechanisms can respond.

Authorities in Taiwan have strengthened penalties for fraud and digital impersonation, while law enforcement agencies are developing tools to detect manipulated media. Civil society, fact-check groups and educational institutions also play a vital role in promoting digital literacy and debunking viral disinformation and misinformation.

Yet all three experts told TCN that the trend of AI will inevitably continue, and thus the battle against deepfakes will remain an ongoing challenge.

As AI systems grow more sophisticated, distinguishing authentic information from synthetic media may become one of the defining struggles of the digital era.