Don't Believe What You See! How Deepfake Evidence Will Mislead the Courts

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Do our eyes lie to us? Do our ears deceive us? For centuries, one of our most fundamental bases in the manifestation of justice and the uncovering of truth has been "tangible" and "visible" evidence, beyond testimonies. Photographs, sound recordings, videos... Frozen versions of the moment, imprisoned sounds, were pieces of objective reality that were assumed to leave no room for doubt. But what if this assumption is being shaken to its core by a dark game of the digital age? What if what we see and hear is no longer the product of absolute truth, but a skillfully constructed illusion?

Can justice prevail against a fabricated reality?

"Deepfake" or "deepfake" technology has opened Pandora's box and begun an insidious journey to the heart of our justice system. This technology, fed by artificial intelligence algorithms, is now at the service not only of Hollywood studios but also of malicious individuals or organized groups. It has become possible with frightening ease to perfectly place a person's face on another's body, to make them say words they have never said by imitating their voice, and even to load realistic expressions and speech onto completely virtual characters.

Think of the courtroom. A video recording of a defendant confessing to a crime... Footage of a witness accepting a bribe... Or an audio recording of a politician leaking sensitive information... What happens when these are presented as "definitive" evidence that can change the course of cases and turn lives upside down? What if this evidence is distorted, digitally manipulated copies of reality? Which expert, which technological analysis will be able to distinguish with 100% certainty whether a piece of content is "real" or "fake"? In the face of this dizzying advancement of technology, the risk of detection methods always being one step behind not only upsets the balance of the scales of justice, but also pushes the scales themselves to the breaking point.

This situation is not just a technical issue, but also a profound epistemological crisis. That is, it is a shaking up of our fundamental assumptions about the nature, source, and limits of knowledge. If the reliability of the visual and auditory evidence that we believe to be the most direct and convincing is so questionable, what does the very thing we call "truth" mean? Doesn't the ideal of "getting to the truth" in the courtroom disappear behind a synthetic smokescreen?

Justice is founded on the principles of objectivity and evidence-based evidence. But how will these principles survive if the evidence itself can be manipulated and it becomes nearly impossible to distinguish the real from the fake? Who will bear the burden of proof? Will it be more challenging to prove that a video is real or fake? How will the trial process work when the defense approaches every piece of visual/auditory evidence with the suspicion that it could be a deepfake? How will the presumption of innocence be protected in the shadow of digital skepticism?

These questions take us to an even more philosophical area: Has the gap between the reality we perceive and objective reality ever been wider? Remember Plato's allegory of the cave; prisoners who thought the shadows on the wall were real... Aren't we in danger of thinking the shadows that the digital world offers us, that is, the artfully produced fake images and sounds, are real? Could the courts become new caves where these digital shadow plays are played?

Of course, technological solutions will be sought, digital watermarks, blockchain-based verification systems, and artificial intelligence-supported detection algorithms will be developed. However, this will be a constant cat-and-mouse game. The technology that creates fraud will always have the potential to be one step ahead of the technology that tries to detect it.

Perhaps the solution requires not just a technological but also a legal and philosophical restructuring. Perhaps we need to reconsider the absolute trust we place in visual and audio evidence, subjecting it to much more rigorous cross-validation with other evidence (witness testimony, physical evidence, logical inference). Perhaps judges and prosecutors will need to be much more conscious of, and skeptical of, the potential misleading nature of digital evidence.

But the most fundamental question remains: How can the spirit of justice live on in a world where trust has been shaken to such a fundamental level? How can we maintain the will to pursue truth when we cannot believe what we see and hear? The threat of deepfakes is shaking not only the courtroom, but also our perception of reality, our trust in each other, and ultimately the foundations of our civilization.

Keep your eyes open, but don't just believe what you see anymore. Because the greatest illusion of the digital age may be the truth itself. And seeing how this illusion can blind justice will perhaps be the most painful truth.