Orbán Uses AI as His New Wonder Weapon (164 days until the elections)

Every Thursday we round up the most important developments of Hungary’s election campaign — tracking the duel between Viktor Orbán and Péter Magyar. Follow our series as we guide you through the historic campaign leading up to Hungary’s 2026 parliamentary elections.

This week’s highlights include:

• Fidesz attacks with fake videos and fake images.
• “Mine’s twice as big,” declared Viktor Orbán.
• Szijjártó arranged a Lavrov interview for his buddy.
• Rising prices could be Fidesz’s downfall.

Fidesz Attacks with Fake Videos

Péter Magyar – currently the strongest Hungarian opposition leader according to public opinion polls – stands behind a podium labeled Pension Cuts, explaining how he would reduce pensions. Such a video appeared on Tuesday on the Facebook page of Balázs Orbán, chief adviser to the Hungarian prime minister and head of Fidesz’s campaign. It takes no particular expertise to see that the video is fake — and a poorly made one at that. Yet anyone scrolling quickly through their news feed might retain only one message: Péter Magyar – pension cuts.

The video features sentences that Péter Magyar never said. Most are taken out of context from various experts who are not even affiliated with the Tisza Party. Their names appear in the background, but the statements are spoken by an AI-generated version of Péter Magyar. Nowhere does the video indicate that it was created using artificial intelligence.

Péter Magyar Protests

Péter Magyar called the Fidesz AI video an act of “open electoral fraud” and urged “all political parties, public figures and media outlets” to condemn Orbán’s move. “As you know, falsification is one of the stages of denying reality,” says the opposition leader in his response video.

He also announced that he would file a criminal complaint against Balázs Orbán, who had published the fake video. What he can achieve with such a filing remains uncertain — but chances are, not much. In Hungary, public figures are expected to endure significantly more in the public arena than ordinary citizens.

The first to respond to Magyar’s appeal was a politician from the Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog Party, who said these AI videos “completely lack any element of reality — and aren’t even funny.”

„Without truth and reality there can be no politics, no action, and no democracy,” wrote Dávid Nagy. Later, both the far-right Our Homeland Movement (Mi Hazánk) and the left-wing Democratic Coalition condemned the smear video about Péter Magyar — though each also took the opportunity to criticize Magyar himself in their statements.

A New Level

As we wrote last week, Fidesz has fired up its use of AI — this video was not the first time the governing party and its media ecosystem deployed artificial intelligence during the campaign. Virtually every day new clips or images appear depicting Péter Magyar saying things he never said, or portraying him in a dehumanizing, humiliating way — for example, as the chained dog of Manfred Weber, president of the European People’s Party.

Viktor Orbán himself has shared several of these videos: in one, he scores a goal against an AI-generated Péter Magyar who collapses in tears; in another, Volodymyr Zelensky promotes the Tisza Party’s new mobile application — which supposedly steals people’s data — while Péter Magyar applauds.

Political scientist Gábor Török called this use of lies in a campaign “a step up.” “Here they are not (primarily) lying about the state of the country but about the opponent’s intentions — saying obviously unprovable, false things about them,” he wrote. According to Török, this kind of falsehood differs from when then-prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsány lied in 2006 about the state of the nation’s finances during the campaign.

“Mine’s Twice as Big,” Declared Viktor Orbán

On October 23, Budapest saw two massive demonstrations: Fidesz’s Peace March (Békemenet) and the Tisza Party’s National March. Both drew tens of thousands of people, and speculation began immediately over which crowd was larger.

Viktor Orbán was quick to place his bet. That same day, he posted on Facebook a photo comparing the two marches with the caption: “There were twice as many of us at the Peace March as at Tisza’s war march.”

Yet it was quite obvious that the picture showing the Tisza march depicted Heroes’ Square at a moment before the event had even begun. Other photos clearly showed that the square later filled up completely and that the crowd stretched far along Andrássy Avenue.

Although the use of drones was permitted only during the Fidesz event, a photo taken from a Ryanair passenger plane flying over Budapest quickly spread on social media. It showed the Tisza march from above. Péter Magyar shared that image, adding that it was the moment which “finally tore down Orbán’s wall of lies.”

Numbers Game

Sociologists at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) also published their own estimates of crowd sizes. Sociologist Andrea Szabó, assisted by university students, measured the scale of both events and concluded that Fidesz mobilized roughly 85 000–92 000 people, while the Tisza march drew 160 000–170 000 participants. “These are all conservative estimates, but I can state with certainty that there were not twice as many people at the first event. In fact, I’m almost sure that, if not double, at least 1.7 times as many attended the afternoon rally as the morning one,” wrote Szabó.

Later, the government released statistics intended to back Orbán’s claim. Allegedly based on mobile-phone cell-tower data, they stated that more than 80 000 people attended the Fidesz event and 45 000 joined the Tisza march. The authenticity of these figures is impossible to verify.

Waiting for the Budapest Summit

At the beginning of the week, Viktor Orbán traveled to Rome, where Pope Leo XIV received him in a private audience. He also held talks with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Orbán revealed that he would travel to Washington the following week to discuss new U.S. sanctions against Russia with Donald Trump.

From the Hungarian point of view, Trump had “gone too far” with these sanctions, Orbán told a reporter from the Italian daily La Repubblica. Later, Minister Gergely Gulyás clarified that the Washington meeting would take place on 7th November.

Gas, Oil, and Peace

In another interview, given to Hungarian public television from Rome, Orbán declared that he did not intend to give up Russian energy. “We must fight to the end to keep access to Russian oil and gas,” he said, arguing that without Russian energy carriers, “Hungarian households would see their monthly expenses double, and the cost of operating vehicles would skyrocket.” He provided no data to support these claims.

The prime minister also stated that the long-anticipated summit between Putin and Trump in Budapest could be taken as a fact: “There will be a Budapest summit.”

According to him, “They could bring peace — or at least an agreement — under one roof within two or three days. When that will happen, nobody knows, as the negotiating delegations are in constant contact.” The credibility of these statements, too, cannot be verified.

Szijjártó Arranged a Lavrov Interview for His Buddy

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov gave an interview to a Hungarian YouTube channel known for regularly featuring pro-Russian Hungarian influencers who present themselves as security experts. The channel, called Ultrahang (“Ultrasound”), frequently hosts Georg Spöttle, a German-born commentator (and former alien / UFO expert) who often reports from the Russian side of the Ukrainian front, where Chechen fighters welcome him as a guest.

Investigative outlet Direkt36 recently revealed that Spöttle maintains ties to Russian intelligence services.

In September, Spöttle appeared together with Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó on the Ultrahang channel. The host conducted the interview in a casual, first-name-basis tone, addressing both men informally, and they did the same. Szijjártó remarked that he didn’t care what Direkt36 had written about Spöttle.

Szijjártó’s Friends

Soon afterward, it emerged that Szijjártó had personally intervened to ensure that Ultrahang’s founder, Tamás Cs. Király, could conduct an exclusive interview in Moscow with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

In the interview, Lavrov simply repeated the standard Russian talking points about the war in Ukraine, and Cs. Király let him do so without challenge. Among other falsehoods, Lavrov claimed that the 1994 Budapest Memorandum merely promised that Ukraine would not be attacked with nuclear weapons — when in reality, the signatories guaranteed Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Lavrov also stated that the Russian army must keep advancing in Ukraine “as long as the Nazi leadership in Kyiv remains in power.”

Russia expert András Rácz later wrote that Szijjártó himself probably felt uncomfortable after watching the interview, given the Hungarian “reporter’s” amateurish performance. Cs. Király, he noted, “does not speak English well enough for such an interview and allowed Lavrov to manipulate him and lie without restraint.”

Poll of the Week

In March this year, the Orbán government introduced a price-margin cap. The measure limits the retailer’s profit margin on thirty basic food items to 10 percent, claiming this would stop the surge in food prices. The effectiveness of the policy has remained controversial, yet in recent months the government has both expanded it to other products and extended it until the end of November.

In February, food inflation in Hungary stood at 7.1 percent; by September, it had fallen to 4.7 percent.

According to a Publicus Institute poll published on October 27, most voters see the margin cap as a campaign tool. Sixty percent of respondents said they “agree or rather agree” that the measure is meant for electioneering. Twenty-eight percent disagreed, and twelve percent had no opinion.

The public does not view the measure’s effectiveness very positively either: only 22 percent of all respondents said they feel they are paying even slightly less at the checkout thanks to the price-margin cap. Among Fidesz supporters, that share rises to 47 percent; among opposition voters, it drops to 10 percent.

What may be the most alarming figure for Fidesz is that 52 percent of respondents said they believe the rise in food prices is the result of the government’s own economic policies.

English version generated using AI translation and revised by the author.