Seeking to define deepfakes from U.S. state laws

Abstract

In six years, the word deepfake has gone from a niche on Reddit to the main object of research for hundreds of researchers and to the front line of concern of many policymakers. However, this transition did not lead to a faithful definition because it is still an in-flux technology. There is one sector, however, that is incompatible with vague and equivocal concepts: legislative production. In this study, we analysed the definitions of deepfakes (or synthetic media) in the laws of five states in the United States and proposed the key concepts that characterise them: artificial intelligence, fake/false and the reference (specific or generic) to the media that can support these deepfakes.