Europol: Deepfakes and law enforcement

In just a few years, when we laughed at bizarre, obvious fake AI videos on Facebook and wondered how anyone could think they were real, now we scroll by AI-generated content, not even realizing it isn’t a person. Europol, the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation, published a report about how this could affect law enforcement proceedings … and how criminals could use it to their advantage.

Europol’s Report, entitled Face reality: Deepfakes and law enforcementDeepfakes, which are artificially generated likenesses that look just like real people, have become so good in recent years they are often difficult to tell apart from videos of actual people. Deepfakes are AI generated likenesses that are so similar to videos of real humans in recent times, they can’t be distinguished from them. Europol warns about the impact deepfakes could have on crime and law-enforcement. They claim it can be used to manipulate or spread misinformation, alter or generate video footage, and even sold as a service.

The report details specific crimes that could be committed using deepfakes:

• Online harassment or humiliation of individuals
• Extortion and fraud
• Facilitating document fraud
• Falsifying online identities and fooling ‘know your customer’ mechanisms16
• Non-consensual pornography
• Online child sexual exploitation
• Falsifying electronic evidence or manipulating it for criminal justice investigations
• Disrupting financial markets
• Disinformation and manipulation of public opinion
• Supporting extremist or terrorist narratives
• Stoking social unrest, political polarisation

Deepfakes also make it hard to continue law enforcement procedures, since new measures are needed to account for the fact footage and documents may now be doctored. Audio-visual evidence used to be trusted as an accurate representation of the events. Now, there will be more safeguards in place to stop manipulation and cross-checking of footage will be even more important.

In terms of deepfake detector, the report It is a good idea to use It ends with a positive: “Law enforcers have always dealt with faked evidence, and are therefore in a great position to adapt when deepfakes appear,” the report asserts. The report offers a number of ways that officials can combat deepfake proof, including manual detection and automated detection. It also suggests preventative measures, which can be taken in order to avoid the manipulation of evidence.

An All-Powerful Tool … in Everyone’s Hands

Not only this, AI is only improving – and exponentially more quickly than anyone expected. Within seconds or minutes, anyone with Internet could create any length of text. This includes entire songs, videos and photos. The report details the policies of various social media apps that are intended to regulate AI-generated content.

• Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms, aims to remove deepfakes or edited media where “manipulation may not be obvious and could lead to misinformation”
• TikTok banned “Digital Forgeries, Synthetic Media and Manipulated Media” that deceive users by distorting truths of events
• Reddit “doesn’t allow content which impersonates individuals, entities or in a misleading manner”.
• Youtube’s community guidelines prohibit spam, deceptive tactics and scams.

Despite these policies, it doesn’t seem that they have removed a single drop of AI content from any of these sites. Spotify has a large library of AI generated content that many users may not notice. YouTube and TikTok get a daily barrage of AI-generated content, and much of the content for kids on these apps is AI. Many YouTubers have complained that why spend the time and effort to create a video when you can generate it in seconds, and earn more money?

Constantly updating, Constantly everywhere

AI isn’t just a thing on social media. Recently, Google announced that their Gemini AI will now be able to summarise and create prompts based on PDFs – joining the other apps Gemini is already integrated into, like Gmail, Sheets, and Docs. iPhones now have the ability to generate videos using clips from your library and can also find, summarize and search information from emails. AI chatbots will even play the part of your favourite character or celebrity while you are chatting with them.

The Bottom Line

While the report gives clear directions for law-enforcement officials on how to tackle the deepfake issues, creatives including musicians and YouTubers could face a tougher road when competing with AI-generated content. We may not all have the power to stop others from using AI in a nefarious way, but we can still work together. Can you imagine? all do our part to ensure that AI remains a useful tool – not a replacement – for human-made art.