Japanese PM Takaichi Faces Questions Over Alleged Social Media Smear Campaign
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is under scrutiny over allegations that her office was involved in the creation and distribution of AI-generated videos targeting political opponents during recent elections. Opposition lawmakers have pressed her on the claims, which she says are diverting attention from her duties.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's camp was allegedly involved in creating and spreading videos on social media to target political opponents during last October's Liberal Democratic Party presidential race and this February's House of Representatives election. The weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun published reports alleging that one of Takaichi’s secretaries was connected to an online smear campaign, citing evidence including emails and audio recordings. The alleged campaign reportedly involved the distribution of hundreds of AI-generated videos from burner accounts on social media. An individual testified that he carried out smear campaign activities while communicating with the prime minister's publicly funded first secretary, according to Mainichi.jp. Opposition lawmakers have repeatedly questioned Takaichi on the allegations. Takaichi said on June 22 that such questioning is taking time away from her duties as premier. She has maintained she had no knowledge of the videos, according to Newsonjapan.com, and said she wants to submit a statement from her secretary to Parliament, according to Straits Times.
This account was written only from facts that survived Augur's
corroboration pass — 5 corroborated across opposed news blocs,
0 contested (attributed to both sides), 4
single-source (attributed). Nothing was added; no significance was inferred.
Model Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B-Instruct.
See the evidence & the verbatim quotes →