WilmerHale’s Matthew Ferraro authored an article for The Hill titled, “Congress’s deepening interest in deepfakes.”
Excerpt: Congress is closing the year by taking significant yet unheralded early steps to legislate on “deepfakes,” false yet highly realistic artificial intelligence (AI)-created media — like a recent satirical video of President Trump appearing to read a Christmas story.
In quick succession in December, Congress sent two bills to the president, the National Defense Authorization (NDAA) for FY 2021 and the IOGAN Act. They would require, respectively, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to issue reports on and bolster research into deepfakes, which are sometimes known by other names like “machine-manipulated media,” “synthetic media,” or “digital content forgeries.” These bills ask for recommendations that could lay the predicate for federal regulations of such media.