Dr Theocharis Kyriacou, associate professor of artificial intelligence at York St John University, said the use of AI deepfakes was “widespread” within local democracy and local government.
“It can be about political campaigns, smear campaigns, blackmailing of people, financial gain, trying to draw attention,” he said.
“But there are good uses of artificial intelligence too and we should not lose sight of that.”
After watching the clip featuring Kilbane’s fake likeness, Kyriacou said a similar video could be made in “about 15 to 20 minutes”.
“If you want to be more elaborate, and to fool people who are just looking at it, you need a lot more images and video of the person and several hours to do it.
“But it can still be done with equipment that we have at home.”
The professor said that, if people were “vigilant and sceptical”, they would still be able to separate what was real from what was fake.
He added: “We start by checking the source, ask ourselves ‘does this make sense?’
“Look at artefacts and images within the videos that we can scrutinise.
“It is becoming more and more difficult – experts with specialist software can do it better – but that is a start.”