Las Vegas (CNN Business) The Democratic National Committee wanted to demonstrate the potential threat to the 2020 election posed by deepfake videos — clips created with artificial intelligence that can make people appear to do or say things they never did. So the committee came up with a novel solution: It had experts make one, with its chair as the victim.

People in the room for a presentation by the DNC were told that DNC Chair Tom Perez was supposed to be there, but was unable to make it. They said he going to connect by Skype instead. Then Perez came on screen and apologized for not being in attendance — except that he'd said no such thing.

With the cooperation of the DNC's chief security officer Bob Lord, experts in artificial intelligence had altered Perez's facial expressions to make it appear as if he was apologizing. Then they'd used Lord's voice to put the words in Perez's fake mouth.

While many people in Washington might have recognized a difference in Perez's voice, the audience at Def Con largely appeared not to. And when the video was over and the audience was told what had happened, they clapped.