Bipartisan legislation directing an annual, comprehensive examination into the technology underpinning, and threats posed by super-realistic manipulated media called deepfakes may have found a path forward as an amendment to the Senate’s fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act.
Sens. Rob Portman, R-Ohio and Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii proposed adding the Deepfake Report Act—originally unveiled one year ago—to the annual authorization bill Thursday. The Deepfake Report Act, which passed the Senate in October and was referred to the House Consumer Protection and Commerce Subcommittee, would mandate the Homeland Security Department to investigate the potential impacts of deepfakes and other, related technologically altered content on national and election security.
“As [artificial intelligence] rapidly becomes an intrinsic part of our economy and society, AI-based threats, such as deepfakes, have become an increasing threat to our democracy,” Portman said in a statement. “Addressing the challenges posed by deepfakes will require policymakers to grapple with important questions related to civil liberties and privacy. This bill prepares our country to answer those questions and address concerns by ensuring we have a sound understanding of this issue.”
Deepfakes refer to digitally- and AI-manipulated images, audio and videos that make it appear as if the media’s subjects did or said things they did not. Early iterations of the digitally-forged content were posted by a Reddit user who applied machine learning to insert the faces of American celebrities into pornographic videos, and over time more of the synthetic content has increasingly emerged, including senators introduce deepfake focused amendment defense authorization
