Deepfakes and crime

Contact person: Nina Sunde

Status: Pre-project

The Deepfakes and Crime project examines how deepfakes and other forms of synthetic media may affect criminal investigations, digital evidence, and decision-making throughout the justice system. The project comprises three interrelated sub-projects: (1) a systematic review of research on the implications of deepfakes for criminal investigations, evidential integrity, media authentication, and judicial assessment; (2) a mapping of existing technologies and methods for deepfake detection and media authentication, including their capabilities and limitations; and (3) interviews with police investigators, digital forensic practitioners, judges, and relevant public- and private-sector stakeholders to explore practical challenges, needs, and perspectives concerning synthetic media across the justice system. Bringing together perspectives from law, social science, and technology, the project will produce an evidence-and-gap map of the current research landscape, a technology map of relevant detection and authentication approaches, and a stakeholder-informed research agenda for a larger follow-up project. These outputs will identify knowledge gaps and research priorities that can inform the future development of investigative practices, evidential guidance, training, and independent evaluation of deepfake-detection and authentication technologies. The work is informed by use cases developed by police user partners and input from partners associated with Action Cluster AC6, Combatting Criminality with AI.