WASHINGTON, DC –U.S. Senators Gary Peters (D-MI) and Rob Portman (R-OH) Chairman and Ranking Member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, introduced bipartisan legislation to assist the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in its mission to counter deepfake technology.
“Deepfakes present a serious national security threat as bad actors use the technology to deceive thousands of people with misinformation and forgeries,” said Senator Peters. “This commonsense bipartisan bill will help strengthen our nation’s ability to combat malicious attempts to spread lies and further divide the American people.”
“Deepfakes represent a unique threat to our national security and our democracy,” said Senator Portman. “For most of human history seeing meant believing, but now that is becoming less and less true thanks to deepfakes. Combined with the network effects created by social media, fake videos or pictures can travel around the world in an instant, tricking citizens. I’m proud to introduce this bipartisan legislation because establishing a deepfake task force at the Department of Homeland Security will help solve this problem by making progress to develop standards so that companies, tech platforms, journalists, and all Americans can track and authenticate content so we can better separate the truth from the lies.”
Deepfake Task Force Act would create a task force within DHS charged with producing a coordinated plan to explore how a “digital content provenance” standard could assist with reducing the spread of deepfakes, develop tools for content creators to authenticate their content and its origin, and increase the ability of civil society and industry leaders to relay trust and information about the source of the deepfakes to consumers. The task force would be comprised of experts from academia, government, civil society, and industry, and would be chaired by DHS.
The Deepfake Task Force Act builds upon legislation introduced by Peters and Portman last Congress that was signed into law as an amendment to the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act. The Deepfakes Report Act directs the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to conduct an annual study of deepfakes to help policymakers and the American public better understand the threats deepfakes pose to our national security and democratic processes.
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