AI ‘digital twins' are warping political reality, leaving deepfake victims with few options for legal action
Artificial intelligence (AI) is producing hyperrealistic "digital twins" of politicians, celebrities, pornographic material, and more – leaving victims of deepfake technology struggling to determine legal recourse.
Former CIA agent and cybersecurity expert Dr. Eric Cole told Fox News Digital that poor online privacy practices and people's willingness to post their information publicly on social media leaves them susceptible to AI deepfakes.
"The cat's already out of the bag," he said.
"They have our pictures, they know our kids, they know our family. They know where we live. And now, with AI, they're able to take all that data about who we are, what we look like, what we do, and how we act, and basically be able to create a digital twin," Cole continued.
Keep These Tips In Mind To Avoid Being Duped By Ai-generated Deepfakes
That digital twin, he claimed, is so good that it is hard to tell the difference between the artificial version and the real person the deepfake is based on.
Read On The Fox News App
Last month, a fraudulent audio clip circulated of Donald Trump Jr. suggesting that the U.S. should have sent military equipment to Russia instead of Ukraine.
The post was widely discussed on social media and appeared to be a clip from an episode of the podcast "Triggered with Donald Trump Jr."
Experts in digital analysis later confirmed that the recording of Trump Jr.'s voice was created using AI, noting that the technology has become more "proficient and sophisticated."
FactPostNews, an official account of the Democratic Party, posted the audio as if it was authentic. The account later deleted the recording. Another account, Republicans against Trump, also posted the clip.
In the last several years, numerous examples of AI deepfakes have been used to mislead viewers engaging with political content. A 2022 video showed what appeared to be Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy surrendering to Russia – but the fake clip was poorly made and only briefly spread online.
Manipulated videos of President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden later appeared in the run-up to the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election. Based on existing videos, these clips often altered Trump and Biden's words or behaviors.
Ai-generated Porn, Including Celebrity Fake Nudes, Persist On Etsy As Deepfake Laws 'Lag Behind'
AI-generated images, known as "deepfakes," often involve editing videos or photos of people to make them look like someone else by using AI. Deepfakes hit the public's radar in 2017 after a Reddit user posted realistic-looking pornography of celebrities to the platform, opening the floodgates to users employing AI to make images look more convincing and resulting in them being more widely shared in the following years.
Cole told Fox News Digital that people are their "own worst enemy" regarding AI deepfakes, and limiting online exposure may be the best way to avoid becoming a victim.
However, in politics and media, where "visibility is key," public figures become a prime target for nefarious AI use. A threat actor interested in replicating President Trump will have plenty of fodder to create a digital twin, siphoning data of the U.S. leader in different settings.
Congress Must Stop A New Ai Tool Used To Exploit Children
"The more video I can get on, how he walks, how he talks, how he behaves, I can feed that into the AI model and I can make deepfake that is as realistic as President Trump. And that's where things get really, really scary," Cole added.
In addition to taking on the personal responsibility of quartering off personal data online, Cole said legislation may be another method to curtail the improper use of AI.
Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., recently introduced the Take it Down Act, which would make it a federal crime to publish, or threaten to publish, nonconsensual intimate imagery, including "digital forgeries" crafted by artificial intelligence. The bill unanimously passed the Senate earlier in 2025, with Cruz saying in early March he believes it will be passed by the House before becoming law.
The proposed legislation would require penalties of up to three years in prison for sharing nonconsensual intimate images — authentic or AI-generated — involving minors and two years in prison for those images involving adults. It also would require penalties of up to two and a half years in prison for threat offenses involving minors, and one and a half years in prison for threats involving adults.
The bill would also require social media companies such as Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram and similar platforms to put procedures in place to remove such content within 48 hours of notice from the victim.
High School Students, Parents Warned About Deepfake Nude Photo Threat
First lady Melania Trump spoke on Capitol Hill earlier this month for the first time since returning to the White House, participating in a roundtable with lawmakers and victims of revenge porn and AI-generated deepfakes.
"I am here with you today with a common goal — to protect our youth from online harm," Melania Trump said on March 3. "The widespread presence of abusive behavior in the digital domain affects the daily lives of our children, families and communities."
Andy LoCascio, the co-founder and architect of Eternos.Life (credited with building the first digital twin), said that while the "Take it Down" act is a "no-brainer," it is completely unrealistic to assume it will be effective. He notes that much of the AI deepfake industry is being served from locations not subject to U.S. law, and the legislation would likely only impact a tiny fraction of offending websites.
He also noted that the text-to-speech cloning technology can now create "perfect fakes." While most major providers have significant controls in place to prevent the creation of fakes, LoCascio told Fox News Digital that some commercial providers are easily fooled.
Furthermore, LoCascio said anyone with access to a reasonably powerful graphical processor unit (GPU) could build their own voice models capable of supporting "clones." Some available services require less than 60 seconds of audio to produce this. That clip can then be edited with basic software to make it even more convincing.
Democrat Senator Targeted By Deepfake Impersonator Of Ukrainian Official On Zoom Call: Reports
"The paradigm regarding the realism of audio and video has shifted. Now, everyone must assume that what they are seeing and hearing is fake until proven to be authentic," he told Fox News Digital.
While there is little criminal guidance regarding AI deepfakes, attorney Danny Karon says alleged victims can still pursue civil claims and be awarded money damages.
In his forthcoming book "Your Lovable Lawyer's Guide to Legal Wellness: Fighting Back Against a World That's Out to Cheat You," Karon notes that AI deepfakes fall under traditional defamation law, specifically libel, which involves spreading a false statement via literature (writing, pictures, audio, and video).
To prove defamation, a plaintiff must provide evidence and arguments on specific elements that meet the legal definition of defamation according to state law. Many states have similar standards for proving defamation.
For example, under Virginia law, as was the case in the Depp v. Heard trial, actor Johnny Depp's team had to satisfy the following elements that constitute defamation:
The defendant made or published the statement
The statement was about the plaintiff
The statement had a defamatory implication for the plaintiff
The defamatory implication was designed and intended by the defendant
Due to circumstances surrounding publication, it could incubate a defamatory implication to someone who saw it
"You can't conclude that something is defamation until you know what the law and defamation is. Amber Heard, for instance, didn't, which is why she didn't think she was doing anything wrong. Turns out she was. She stepped in crap and she paid all this money. This is the analysis people need to go through to avoid getting into trouble as it concerns deepfakes or saying stuff online," Karon said.
Karon told Fox News Digital that AI deepfake claims can also be channeled through invasion of privacy law, trespass law, civil stalking, and the right to publicity.
Federal Judge Blocks California Law Banning Election Deepfakes
"If Tom Hanks had his voice co-opted recently to promote a dental plan, that is an example of a company exploiting someone's name, image, and likeness, and in that case voice, to sell a product, to promote or to derive publicity from somebody else. You can't do that," he said.
Unfortunately, issues can arise if a plaintiff is unable to determine who created the deepfake or if the perpetrator is located in another country. In this context, someone looking to pursue a defamation case may have to hire a web expert to find the source of the content.
If the individual or entity is international, this becomes a venue issue. Even if a person is found, a plaintiff must determine the answer to these questions:
Can the individual be served?
Will the foreign nation help to facilitate this?
Will the defendant show up to the trial?
Does the plaintiff have a reasonable likelihood of collecting money?
If the answer to some of these questions is no, investing the time and finances required to pursue this claim may not be worth it.
"Our rights are only as effective as our ability to enforce them, like a patent. People say, 'I have a patent, so I'm protected.' No, you're not. A patent is only as worthwhile as you're able to enforce it. And if you have some huge company who knocks you off, you're never going to win against them," Karon said.
Fox News' Brooke Singman and Emma Colton contributed to this report.Original article source: AI 'digital twins' are warping political reality, leaving deepfake victims with few options for legal action
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNN
10 minutes ago
- CNN
Analysis: Trump is losing support among independent voters. Who are they?
We'll have to wait and see exactly what the American bombing raid on Iranian nuclear sites accomplished and how far it set back the country's nuclear ambitions. The White House and Pentagon have launched a concerted effort to convince Americans the mission was successful and needed. At a Pentagon news conference, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine went into great detail to explain the years of planning that underpinned readiness for the attack and how it was executed. Details like those Caine shared could help sway public opinion and bring Americans behind strikes. But the early assessment of how the public views the strikes is probably not what the administration was hoping for. A majority, 56%, disapproved of the strikes in a CNN poll released this week, before conflicting assessments of the mission's success. The results in CNN's poll fall along predictable ideological lines. Democrats will pretty much always disapprove of what the Trump administration does, and Republicans will pretty much always approve. Here's how CNN's polling team put it in their report: Majorities of independents (60%) and Democrats (88%) disapprove of the decision to take military action in Iran. Republicans largely approve (82%). But just 44% of Republicans strongly approve of the airstrikes, far smaller than the group of Democrats who strongly disapprove (60%), perhaps reflecting that some in Trump's coalition are broadly distrustful of military action abroad. It's an obvious rule of US politics that independent voters are generally the ones who might, as their opinions shift sway, tilt power in the country. And on a range of issues, they have been turning against Trump. CNN's Aaron Blake looked last week at numerous polls on Trump's sweeping domestic policy bill. 'Independents opposed the bill by around a 3-to-1 margin … The KFF and Fox News polls – the ones with the fewest undecideds – showed 7 in 10 independents opposed it,' Blake wrote. On what may be Trump's signature issue, deportations and immigration policy, CNN's polling editor Ariel Edwards-Levy wrote about a CNN poll in April, 'more than half of independents now say they have no real confidence in him to deal with the topic, with 56% now saying he has gone too far on deportations.' On tariffs, the economy and government cuts, Trump has failed, at least so far, to convince Americans who don't identify with either party, that his agenda is the right thing to do. I went to CNN's chief data analyst, Harry Enten, who has been tracking this trend for some time. 'It's pretty clear that independents and independent voters have turned against Trump,' he told me. Back in April, Enten's analysis said that Trump had the worst approval rating on record with independents at that point in a presidency. 'His issue is he has completely lost the center of the electorate,' Enten said, offering two very obvious and simple reasons why. Independents don't like what Trump is doing on the economy. They don't seem to like the bulk of his agenda otherwise (see the 'Big, Beautiful Bill'). This will present major problems for Trump and the GOP going forward. 'Now, it's possible that Trump and the GOP can do well going forward without independents breaking overwhelmingly for them,' Enten said, pointing out that independents broke for Trump in 2024. 'The problem is you can't be losing independents 20+ points and survive in American politics,' he added. At the same time, independents are hard to track for a variety of reasons. Unlike Republicans and Democrats, they don't act as a unified voting bloc, as Edwards-Levy and CNN's Jennifer Agiesta wrote a few years ago. 'Plenty of independents are in fact partisan and they're certainly not de facto moderates,' Edwards-Levy told me. What do independents have in common? 'They're less strongly tethered to particular partisan loyalties and less likely to be closely engaged with politics, all of which makes their views potentially more malleable than those of stronger partisans,' Edwards-Levy said. In a recent Washington Post poll about the Trump's agenda bill, for instance, only 18% of Democrats and 25% of Republicans said they hadn't heard anything about the controversial proposal to extend Trump's first-term tax cuts, create new tax cuts and slash spending, including on Medicaid. It was a much larger portion of independents, 34%, who hadn't heard anything at all about the president's top legislative priority.
12 minutes ago
Congo and Rwanda to sign US-mediated peace deal to end conflict in eastern Congo
DAKAR, Senegal -- The Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda are set to sign a peace deal facilitated by the U.S. to help end the decadeslong deadly fighting in eastern Congo. The deal, to be signed in Washington Friday, would also help the U.S. government and American companies gain access to critical minerals in the conflict-battered, mineral-rich region. The Central African nation of Congo has been ripped apart by conflict with more than 100 armed groups. The most prominent is the M23 rebel group, backed by neighboring Rwanda, whose major advance early this year left bodies littered on the streets. With 7 million people displaced in Congo, the U.N. has called it 'one of the most protracted, complex, serious humanitarian crises on Earth.' Lauded by President Trump last week as 'a Great Day for Africa and ... for the World,' the crucial deal comes as part of other ongoing peace talks to end the conflict, including ones mediated by the African Union as well as Qatar. The agreement involves provisions on respect for territorial integrity, a prohibition of hostilities as well as the disengagement, disarmament and conditional integration of non-state armed groups, U.S. State Department deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott told reporters on Thursday. U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric also said on Thursday that such a deal is welcomed, adding: 'We talk almost every day about … the horrific suffering of civilians, the hunger, the sexual violence, the constant fear, the constant displacement' in eastern Congo. Congo hopes the U.S. will provide it with the security support needed to fight the rebels and possibly get them to withdraw from the key cities of Goma and Bukavu, and from the entire region where Rwanda is estimated to have up to 4,000 troops. Rwanda has said it is defending its territorial interests and not supporting the M23. However, the M23 rebels have suggested the agreement won't be binding on them. The rebel group has not been directly involved in the planned peace deal although it has been part of other ongoing peace talks. Corneille Nangaa, leader of the Congo River Alliance that includes the M23, told the Associated Press in March that direct peace talks with Congo can only be held if the country acknowledges their grievances and that 'anything regarding us which are done without us, it's against us.' An M23 spokesman, Oscar Balinda, also echoed those thoughts in an interview with AP this week, saying the U.S.-facilitated deal does not concern the rebels. Analysts say the U.S. government's commitment might depend on how much access it has to the minerals being discussed under a separate minerals deal being negotiated. The mostly untapped minerals — estimated to be worth as much as $24 trillion by the U.S. Department of Commerce — are critical to much of the world's technology. Christian Moleka, a political scientist at the Congolese think tank Dypol, called the planned deal a 'major turning point' in the decadeslong conflict, but that the signing could "in no way eliminate all the issues of the conflict.' 'The current draft agreement ignores war crimes and justice for victims by imposing a partnership between the victim and the aggressor,' he said. 'This seems like a trigger-happy proposition and cannot establish lasting peace without justice and reparation.' In Congo's North Kivu province, the hardest hit by the fighting, some believe the peace deal will help resolve the violence but warn justice must still be served for an enduring peace to take hold. 'I don't think the Americans should be trusted 100%,' said Hope Muhinuka, an activist from the province. 'It is up to us to capitalize on all we have now as an opportunity.' —-
Fox News
24 minutes ago
- Fox News
House Republican opposing proposed sale of public lands says he's still against Senate bill: 'I remain a no'
Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., said in a Thursday post on X that he remains opposed to the Senate reconciliation measure. "I agree with my colleagues that the federal government has mismanaged federal lands for decades. But I don't agree with their solution. The solution is not to sell public lands. The solution is better management. Let's send legislation to POTUS desk to improve management and access. I remain a no on the senate reconciliation bill," the lawmaker noted. The president has been urging lawmakers to pass the measure. GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has been pushing for the measure to include the sale of some federal land, while Zinke has been opposing the prospect. A Monday press release from the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee indicated that the public land sales provision of the measure had been flagged by the Senate parliamentarian. "Housing prices are crushing families and keeping young Americans from living where they grew up. We need to change that," Lee noted in a Monday night post on X. "Yes, the Byrd Rule limits what can go in the reconciliation bill, but I'm doing everything I can to support President Trump and move this forward," he noted. Zinke served as Interior secretary during a portion of President Donald Trump's first term in office.
