public trust

AI and Society

Deepfake Legislation and Democracy

In 2025 something changed: national lawmakers and courts moved from debating deepfakes as a “future threat” to treating them as present dangers to public discourse. Italy’s new national AI law introduced criminal penalties for harmful deepfakes, while a high-profile AI-generated political clip in the U.S. reignited worries about manicured misinformation spreading in real time. Together, these developments make deepfake legislation…