On 24 June 2022, Berlin's mayor Franziska Giffey had a "completely normal [video] conversation" with Kyiv's mayor Vitali Klitschko.
Or so she thought.
She started to become suspicious when the supposed mayor asked her to support for a gay pride parade in the middle of war-torn Kyiv.
It was not Klitschko, it turned out, but an impostor. Giffey's office later said the person was probably using deepfake technology to trick Berlin's mayor (though the tech behind it has remain...
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Heather Dannyelle Thompson is manager of Digital Democracy at Democracy Reporting International, the Berlin-based NGO watchdog on elections and democracy.