House hearing grapples with deepfake threat

The House Intelligence Committee hosted one of the first congressional hearings specifically focused on examining the threat of so-called deepfake videos manipulated by artificial intelligence to appear strikingly real.

The hearing on Thursday morning featured academics and other experts, coming amid warnings that such technology poses a major disinformation threat ahead of the 2020 presidential election.

“I think we all have to be much more skeptical consumers of what we see online,” House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) told The Hill. “By the time you can tell that it’s a fake, the damage has already been done. So we want to try to inform the public about this so that if it does occur, when it does occur, they’ll have some background about the product.”

Fear about disinformation follows the 2016 presidential election, when Russia created fake accounts on social media aimed at sowing divisions and stirring tensions.

As other actors seek to follow the Kremlin’s playbook, deepfake technology is growing more sophisticated and prevalent. It’s possible an average internet user by the 2020 election could create doctored videos so realistic forensic experts will have to verify whether the content is real.

“We aren’t just worried about Twitter bots and fake Facebook accounts anymore,” Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas), a member of the Intelligence Committee, told The Hill.

“It is important for us to recognize that the threat of misinformation campaigns is evolving. And with the development of AI and deepfakes, the effort to insert fake news into our media is more sophisticated than ever.”

Top U.S. intelligence officials including Director of National Intelligence Dan Coatstestified before Congress in January that hostile foreign actors are expected to try to weaponize deepfakes to sow discord and breed doubt.