Why Our Legal System Is Unprepared For The Synthetic Media Age

Forbes

24-06-2025

Jason Crawforth is the Founder and CEO of Swear.com, a company working to restore confidence in digital media authenticity.
In a time when seeing is no longer believing, our legal system is facing a credibility crisis. The U.S. Department of Justice, long a guardian of evidentiary truth, is now staring down a new threat: the rise of synthetic media—AI-generated videos, audio and images indistinguishable from reality. As these technologies grow in sophistication, the DOJ must confront a harsh truth: Traditional evidentiary standards are on the verge of collapse.
The implications are grave. For over a century, video and photographic evidence have been a foundation of truth in courtrooms. But when fabricated footage becomes indistinguishable from actual events, what happens to that foundation?
Synthetic media is advancing at a breakneck pace. Deepfake volumes double every six months. The amount of synthetic content is growing at an exponential pace. The DOJ is no longer just prosecuting crimes; it's doing so in a world where digital reality is contested. They aren't alone in federal agencies feeling the ramifications of deep fakes. The U.S. Department of Treasury has highlighted the problem with now former-Director Andrea Gacki, sharing that, 'While GenAI holds tremendous potential as a new technology, bad actors are seeking to exploit it to defraud American businesses and consumers, to include financial institutions and their customers.'
According to Europol's 2022 report, the emergence of 5G and cloud computing has not only enhanced communication and privacy for institutions but also opened new doors for criminal exploitation. The additional bandwidth enables real-time manipulation of video streams, allowing deepfake technologies to infiltrate videoconferencing, live-streaming and even television broadcasts.
Europol's Innovation Lab emphasizes the rise of "crime-as-a-service" (CaaS), where tools, techniques and AI models—including deepfakes—are commercialized on dark web platforms. These criminal actors are typically early adopters, staying a step ahead of law enforcement.
The report also warns of a deeper societal impact. As synthetic content becomes increasingly realistic and accessible, public trust in media, institutions and authority figures could erode—culminating in what experts term an 'information apocalypse' or 'reality apathy.' In this future, distinguishing fact from fiction becomes nearly impossible, and a shared societal truth may disappear altogether.
Current forensic tools, while valuable, are increasingly reactive and insufficient. They play catch-up in an endless game of cat and mouse. The only truly sustainable solution is a proactive one. This isn't just innovation. It's necessity.
Consider the legal ramifications. If we can't prove that a video wasn't tampered with—if we can't even prove it was real to begin with—how can we admit it as evidence? How can we convict? How can we defend ourselves? The burden of proof becomes a liability. The courtroom becomes a stage for doubt, not justice.
The DOJ must act decisively to update its evidentiary standards. It must embrace media authenticity technologies that don't just detect manipulation but prove reality. Just as DNA testing revolutionized forensics, real-time media authentication can restore trust in digital evidence. It must also push for global standards. Digital content crosses borders in milliseconds; our legal protections must be just as agile.
What Should The DOJ (And Everyone Else) Be Doing Right Now?
To navigate the synthetic media era, the DOJ and other similar institutions need a mindset and technological shift. Here's how they (and you) can get ahead of the threat instead of reacting to it:
1. Shift from detection to authentication. Reactive forensic tools try to spot fakes after they surface, often too late. Instead, agencies need platforms that prove content is real from the moment of capture. Think of it like a digital notary that stamps the truth into every pixel. This transforms evidentiary review from a guessing game into a science.
2. Embrace point-of-creation integrity. The only sustainable solution is to anchor authenticity at the source. By cryptographically fingerprinting digital content and securing it, organizations can maintain an unbroken chain of custody. This level of tamper-evidence deters bad actors and restores evidentiary confidence.
3. Vet media like digital DNA. Just as DNA revolutionized criminal justice by making biological evidence indisputable, cryptographic 'digital DNA' can do the same for recorded evidence. Agencies should adopt tools that let them verify authenticity with mathematical certainty, not assumptions.
4. Demand provenance by default. Any digital asset, especially if presented as evidence, should come with a verifiable origin trail. If it doesn't, treat it with caution. Courts and investigative bodies should begin establishing standards where unverified content is presumed unreliable until proven otherwise.
5. Train for a new evidentiary standard. Judges, prosecutors and investigators must be educated on what modern media authentication looks like. The courtroom of the future won't just examine motive and opportunity, it will scrutinize metadata, hash integrity, and blockchain timestamps.
This is more than a technical challenge—it's a societal one. In an era of disinformation, manipulated media isn't just a tool of crime; it's a weapon against democracy, trust and truth itself.
The justice system's integrity depends on truth. And in this new age, truth must be defended at the pixel level.
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