It’s time to criminalize deepfakes
AS A SOCIETY, WE BELIEVE that making something false and passing it off as something real is wrong. You can’t fake money. You can’t make bootleg recordings of movies or music. You can’t forge a check and cash it at a bank. You can’t paint a picture and tell someone it’s a Rembrandt. You can’t even stick someone else’s logo on cheaper versions of shoes and handbags. All of those are crimes: counterfeiting, forgery, uttering and fraud. And so it should be obvious to make the newest and arguably most insidious form of falsification a crime, too. Deepfakes are pictures, video or audio generated by computers using artificial intelligence. They are startling in their seeming reality. It’s a technology that was honed for Hollywood, letting movies put a younger version of a star in a flashback or a prequel. It has let deceased performers still show up in commercials. But it is becoming better known for its seedy side. A well-done fake can be believed as a politician or celebrity’s real voice or visage. That allows them to be used fraudulently at best; a casual glance around social media shows plenty of counterfeit ads. Worse, they can be used to attack elections and swing opinion. At worst, however, they might not involve celebrities at all. Deepfakes could be part of identity theft. They could target anyone with images generated to depict nudity or simulate sex acts. They could be used for bribery or extortion. They could feed into child pornography. The U.S. House of Representatives has been sitting on a DEEPFAKES Accountability Act bill since September. The Pennsylvania Senate is moving more quickly. On Monday, it approved legislation aimed at identifying deepfakes as a tool for harassment, particularly regarding sexual or nude depictions. It makes the offense greater if it involves a child. This is the kind of update to law that must happen to stay current with rapidly evolving technology. The Pennsylvania legislation could make it possible for prosecutors to hold people accountable when deepfakes might otherwise fall into an undefined gray area between what is clearly illegal and what is merely unethical. It’s past time for the U.S. House of Representatives to do the same.
