Compliance

Deceptive and fraudulent deepfake

Synthetic media that appears real and is intended to deceive or harm.

How the laws define this

At their core, these legal standards agree that a deceptive and fraudulent deepfake is synthetic media that portrays an individual or candidate saying or doing something that did not actually occur in reality, designed to mislead a reasonable person or the public. The primary way these definitions diverge is in the scope of who is protected and the specific regulatory conditions applied. Arizona SB 1359, Arizona SB 1359 (2024), and South Carolina HB 3517 narrow their focus to synthetic media depicting an election candidate or political party with the intent to injure a reputation or deceive voters. In contrast, New Hampshire HB 1596 applies more broadly to any depicted person. Additionally, South Carolina HB 3517 uniquely restricts these prohibitions to media distributed within ninety days of an election when required disclosures are absent.

Synthesised from the 4 statutory definitions below. Each one is quoted in full, with its source.

Definitions (4)

Synthetic media that depicts a candidate or political party with the intent to injure the reputation of the candidate or political party or otherwise deceive a voter, and that either appears to a reasonable person to depict a real individual saying or doing something that did not actually occur in reality, or is intentionally calculated to mislead a reasonable person into concluding that a real individual said or did something that they did not say or do in reality.

Synthetic media that portrays a candidate engaging in speech or conduct that did not occur and that a reasonable person would believe to be authentic; such deceptive deepfakes are prohibited when distributed within ninety days of an election absent the required disclosure.

Synthetic media that, based on the creator's intent to injure a candidate or political party or to deceive voters and on objective elements (for example, whether a reasonable person would be led to believe the depicted speech or conduct occurred or whether it conveys a fundamentally different impression than an unaltered original), constitutes a deceptive and fraudulent deepfake under the statute.

Synthetic media that appears to show a person doing or saying something they did not actually do or say, or that provides a fundamentally inaccurate impression, and is intended to mislead the public about the actions or statements of the depicted individual.