WASHINGTON, DC – Today, U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Gary Peters (D-MI), Ranking Member and Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, introduced the bipartisan Deepfake Task Force Act to assist the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in its mission to counter deepfake technology. Deepfakes are hyper-realistic, digital manipulations of real content that depict events that did not actually occur. The legislation 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.
“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.”
“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.”
NOTE: The Deepfake Task Force Act builds upon Senator Portman’s Deepfake Report Act. The measure directs the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to conduct an annual study of deepfakes and other types of similar content. The legislation requires DHS to assess the technology used to generate deepfakes, the uses of deepfakes by foreign and domestic entities, and available countermeasures to deepfakes, to help policymakers and the public better understand the threats deepfakes pose to our national security and election security. The Deepfake Report Act passed the Senate last year as an amendment to the Senate’s FY 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
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