Deep-Faking Evidence

About

Please join Silicon Flatirons in welcoming Professor Sandra Ristovska for a presentation exploring the growing use of machine-generated visual evidence in courts and the challenges it poses for the legal system.

As AI-based images become increasingly common, questions about how courts determine what counts as credible photographic and videographic evidence are critical for the pursuit of equal and fair justice. Public and policy discussions often focus on technical solutions to AI-based deception, including digital watermarks, authentication protocols, metadata verification, blockchain technologies, and detection software. While such tools play an important role, the challenges extend beyond technological verification. The central issue is not simply whether an image is authentic, but when visual evidence is contested, (1) how legal institutions determine what counts as credible evidence and (2) how judges, attorneys, jurors, and witnesses decide what to believe. This talk, based on Professor Ristovska’s book-in-progress, examines how those decisions are made and why they matter. It argues that the evidentiary challenges associated with AI are neither entirely unprecedented nor confined to the technological fidelity of images. Rather, they emerge from legal procedures, institutional authorities, and viewing practices that have shaped the interpretation of photographs, films, and videos in U.S. courts for more than 150 years.

Professor Ristovska’s presentation will be followed by an expert panel featuring perspectives from criminal law and procedure, evidence law, data privacy, and criminal justice advocacy from both prosecutorial and defense viewpoints, and the judiciary. Building on themes from the presentation, panelists will examine the legal and practical implications of machine-generated visual evidence in the courtroom, including how to assess authenticity and credibility, how to equip judges, jurors, witnesses, and attorneys to evaluate such evidence, and whether regulatory safeguards are needed. The discussion will also consider how the justice system can preserve trust, transparency, accountability, and integrity as these technologies evolve.

Presented by the Daniels Fund Ethics Initiative Collegiate Program at Colorado Law and Silicon Flatirons.

The Silicon Flatirons Center for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship is an interdisciplinary research center at the University of Colorado Law School.