Security News > 2020 > November > US Senate approves deepfake bill to defend against manipulated media

On Wednesday, proposed US legislation to fund defenses against realistic computer-generated media known as deepfakes was approved by the US Senate and the bill now awaits consideration in the US House of Representatives.

Introduced last year by US Senators Catherine Cortez Masto and Jerry Moran, the Identifying Outputs of Generative Adversarial Networks Act aims to promote research to detect and defend against realistic-looking fakery that can be used for purposes of deception, harassment, or misinformation.

The Congressional Research Service claims there's evidence that foreign intelligence agents have used deepfake photos for social media accounts used to attempt to recruit sources.

The bill, S.2904, directs the US National Science foundation to support research into "Manipulated or synthesized content and information authenticity," specifically the content produced by AI systems known as Generative Adversarial Networks(GANs), such as deepfakes.

Facebook, and Microsoft, along with academic institutions, are already conducting related research through initiatives such as the Deepfake Detection Challenge.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2020/11/19/us_senate_deepfake/