Deepfakes
30 items across 24 editions. First seen Fri 11 Sep, last seen Wed 28 Oct.
- AP reports social media videos believed to be produced with AI and linked to Russia are misusing real people's names and photographs to spread disinformation about Senate candidates Sherrod Brown in Ohio and James Talarico in Texas. The Ohio video is styled as a newscast and includes pictures of Haya Akbik, a former Brown intern, and other former staff; Akbik told AP the claims attributed to her are "completely made up" and said "It's my name, it's my reputation, making this allegation, and it's just completely false."
- Dartmouth's Hany Farid told AP his analyses indicated both videos were likely generated or manipulated with AI; he called the Brown video a "fairly low-tech fake" and said the Talarico video "is consistent with previous disinformation campaigns released close to Election Day". Clemson's Darren Linvill found that accounts sharing the new material had also shared earlier content from the Russian network known as Storm-1516, which targeted Kamala Harris and Tim Walz two years ago.
- The attribution is characterised as likely, not confirmed. X took down the initial posts and suspended the users for violating its rules, but copies were still findable on Tuesday, some with hundreds of shares. CISA did not respond to AP's request for comment and the Russian Embassy did not immediately respond; AP notes it has denied interfering in US elections in the past.
- The paper, published online ahead of print in Nature Human Behaviour on October 26, benchmarks AI's ability to imitate humans across three language tasks — image captioning, word association and conversation — and three vision tasks — colour estimation, object detection and attention prediction — collecting data from 636 humans and 37 AI agents.
- The authors ran 72,191 Turing-like tests with 1,916 human judges and 10 AI judges. They report that current AI systems are "approaching the ability to convincingly impersonate humans and deceive human judges in both language and vision", and that "even simple AI judges outperformed humans in distinguishing AI from human responses".
- The headline finding for evaluation practice: "Imitation ability showed minimal correlation with conventional AI performance metrics, suggesting that passing as human is an important independent evaluation criterion."
- Author institutions include Nanyang Technological University and A*STAR in Singapore, the Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines at Harvard and MIT, Harvard Medical School, IBM Research-Zürich, Johns Hopkins and MIT CSAIL. The figures here come from the abstract record; the journal page was not readable in this session.
- Gizmodo reports that OpenAI's article on midterm safeguards, first published in May, was updated in October with a deepfake policy under which images containing election interference or content meant to discourage voting are stylised — rendered "cartoonified" rather than photorealistic — to "help reduce the risk that an imagined scene is mistaken for documentary evidence", while illustrations and social commentary remain possible.
- Gizmodo quotes OpenAI head of elections Josh Lawson saying the aim is to "degrade the evidentiary value of an image" and to make ChatGPT "less useful to bad actors by adding another layer of friction".
- In Gizmodo's own test ChatGPT produced a cartoonified image and then complied with a follow-up request to make it photorealistic; the writer judged the result plausible enough that they would not publish a higher-resolution version without watermarking it. Gizmodo reports that in CNET's test the same follow-up was refused, and that a request to Google Gemini for a photorealistic polling-place image was refused outright.
- Gizmodo cites the Brennan Center as finding OpenAI "significantly improved its protections" while Gemini and Meta AI "made it easier to create convincing fakes". The tests are anecdotal, based on a handful of prompts, and OpenAI's own page was not readable in this session.
- The Jerusalem Post reports Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "shared an AI-generated image depicting a nuclear explosion over Tel Aviv on Sunday, just two days before Israel's October 27 election". The image, posted to his official Instagram account, "shows a massive mushroom cloud rising over a densely populated city, with an enormous explosion engulfing the buildings beneath it". The post "did not explicitly identify the city in the image, though it appeared to show Tel Aviv".
- Netanyahu's caption tied it to Iran: "The State of Israel is in existential danger that Iran and its proxies threaten us with. It is astonishing that nothing has changed, and more than that, everything has become more dangerous because of the existential danger posed by Iran and the axis of evil." He said the public should "put aside the disputes and think only about the most important issue".
- Opposition leaders objected. Democrats chairman Yair Golan wrote on X: "The prime minister of Israel published an image of an atomic bomb over Tel Aviv. I ask that he be kept away from social media. The man and those around him have lost it. The pressure is mounting." Yashar chairman Gadi Eisenkot called it "Another fearmongering video from Netanyahu."
- JPost does not say what tool generated the image or whether the post carried any AI label. This is a head of government using synthetic imagery of an attack on his own country's largest city in the final days of a campaign; the briefing has no independent confirmation of the post beyond this single report.
- The Washington Post reports that campaigns "spent over $137 million on ads generated or enhanced by AI this midterm cycle, up from $50,000 in the 2024 elections", citing an estimate from the Wesleyan Media Project, and that Republican candidates and groups aired the overwhelming majority — "88 percent of spending, or around $120 million".
- The piece reports Democrats are deliberately shunning AI ads and campaigning against them. Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico, responding to AI-generated attack ads from Republican nominee Ken Paxton and allies, says in one spot: "I don't have to use AI, because the truth about Ken Paxton is bad enough." Another Talarico ad carries the disclaimer "Made by humans, not AI".
- On public tolerance, the Post reports an AAPC Foundation survey of 1,568 likely general election voters in which "around 9 out of 10 likely general election voters" said using AI to create a video of an opponent saying something they never said was "completely unacceptable", regardless of whether the video carried an AI disclosure. The AAPC Foundation is a nonprofit associated with the American Association of Political Consultants.
- The $137m total was reported earlier in October; the new material here is the 88%/$120m partisan split, the Democratic strategy and the AAPC Foundation poll. The spending figures are one organisation's estimate of a category with no agreed definition — "generated or enhanced by AI" covers both synthetic video of an opponent and routine production work — and washingtonpost.com returned HTTP 503 to the fetcher, so this item is sourced to the full syndicated text on Yahoo.
- Freedom House launched "Freedom on the Net 2026: Seismic Shifts on the Global Internet" on 22 October, covering June 2025 through May 2026. Its headline finding: "Global internet freedom declined for the 16th consecutive year." Of 38 countries assessed, conditions worsened in 16 and 8 registered gains; the organisation says it "paused coverage of 34 countries in this edition".
- On AI content rules, the report says new Indian rules require prominent labels on synthetic content and cut the window for platforms to remove content flagged by authorities to "within 3 hours, reduced from 36 hours under previous law". Tech Policy Press reports civil society groups warned this could push platforms to remove legitimate journalism and satire.
- The report says the Mexican state of San Luis Potosí reformed its penal code to bar unauthorised AI-generated use of a person's image or voice, and that authorities used the law to "arrest and detain two online journalists in May 2026", with the governor saying the video in question was AI-generated. In February 2026 the UK amended its law penalising non-consensual intimate imagery to cover AI tools, and "launched an investigation into X's Grok service" after the platform failed to remove such images. In September 2025 Australia's eSafety commissioner said the under-16 age-assurance framework "would apply to certain AI companies", particularly those hosting AI companions.
- "The United States scored 73 out of a possible 100 points in Freedom on the Net 2026," unchanged from the previous edition. The paused coverage of 34 countries means this year's totals are not comparable with earlier editions on a like-for-like basis, and the scores are Freedom House's own assessments.
- Politico reports that "Information operations analysis company Graphika released findings Wednesday that Storm-1516 — a Russian-linked influence group active since 2023 — created and posted deepfake videos on X accusing Texas Senate candidate James Talarico of sexual assault."
- Straight Arrow News reports the posts drew "more than 500,000 views and hundreds of comments on X," that the "Zyon Lewis" account was created in September with four posts before the allegation, and that one amplifying account has more than 185,000 followers. It quotes Clemson professor Darren Linvill saying the post "follows the Russian playbook" and was "immediately shared by 15 marketing bots," and cites researchers at antibot4navalny calling it "one of the few Storm-1516's campaigns (so far) targeting the US midterms."
- The reach went beyond social media. Straight Arrow News attributes the Storm-1516 link to the Gnida Project, and the campaign's significance is that a fabricated accusation against a named candidate was seeded through an account impersonating a real former student weeks before a US midterm election.
- Graphika's own report was not published to its public reports index at the time of writing, so the attribution rests on Politico's and Straight Arrow News's accounts of it alongside the Gnida Project's work. Neither outlet gives a forensic detection score, and X has not said whether the account or videos were removed.
- Kyiv Post, relaying a Bloomberg News review, says Bloomberg examined 130 fabricated videos and doctored newspaper front pages circulated between 10 September and 9 October 2026 and attributed to the network tracked as Matryoshka, also called Operation Overload. Kyiv Post describes the campaign as "focused almost exclusively on Democratic contenders".
- The material targeted Democratic candidates in 20 of the 35 US Senate races and 29 of the 36 gubernatorial contests on the 3 November ballot, naming Texas Senate nominee James Talarico and Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff. Talarico's spokesperson denied the claim made against him, and Kyiv Post says no public records substantiate the claim about Ossoff.
- The clips use synthetic likenesses of Robert De Niro, Julia Roberts and Cher, and impersonate ABC News and CBS News broadcasts. Antibot4Navalny, which monitors Kremlin-aligned networks, says views "can jump as high as 200,000 within the first hour but then quickly plateau", a pattern Kyiv Post attributes to bot networks manipulating view counts.
- Kyiv Post says the US open-source intelligence firms Graphika and dTeam corroborated the findings. The underlying Bloomberg investigation published before this window and bloomberg.com could not be opened from here; the figures above are quoted as Kyiv Post relays them.
- BJD leader Amrita Mishra filed a complaint at Capital police station in Bhubaneswar against the unidentified operators of the Instagram and Facebook account "Odianka Chhata", over videos the party says were made with AI and voice cloning to target former bureaucrat and BJD leader Sujata Rout Karthikeyan.
- The complaint says videos uploaded on 18 October allegedly show her phoning the principal of Kendrapara Autonomous College, threatening him and trying to influence student union elections, and states that "the said content is entirely fabricated and has been manufactured with the sole intent to mislead the public".
- The complaint asks police to register an FIR, preserve digital evidence, conduct a forensic examination of the material, obtain information from Meta through lawful channels and stop further circulation. Odisha Bytes says police confirmed they are investigating, and that the account reportedly began posting AI-generated videos after student union elections held across Odisha on 15 October.
- Odisha Bytes does not independently confirm that the videos are synthetic and reports no forensic finding, police conclusion or identification of who runs the account. The fabrication claim is the complainant's.
- PYMNTS reports World, the Sam Altman-backed identity project, announced World ID for banking and finance on Sunday 18 October, its first industry-specific product, aimed at helping businesses tell whether an AI agent is acting for a real person when it moves money or shops.
- AgentKit, now in beta, lets a person delegate World ID Proofs to an AI agent, which can then present them to a website or service without revealing the person's information. The release describes this as distinguishing "an AI agent connected to a verified human" from "anonymous automated traffic".
- The suite also includes World ID for Zoom, available through the Zoom App Marketplace for verifying participants in consequential video meetings, and the World ID app, available in 150-plus countries.
- PYMNTS names no banks using the product and gives no pricing or number of verified humans. It cites PYMNTS Intelligence and Visa Acceptance Solutions research finding 56% of consumers would let an agent search and compare products but only 35% would give it access to saved payment credentials.
- 404 Media, reporting with Court Watch on 16 October, says the Livonia Undercover Resistance to Exploitation Unit ran an operation in which FBI Task Force Officer McKailey Scott created a profile on the dating app Taimi using an AI-generated image of a teen-appearing male named Caleb, with no age listed.
- According to the affidavit as reported, Christopher Thomas Mertens, a high school maintenance worker, began messaging the persona in September, moved the conversation to WhatsApp, was told the persona was 15, sent sexually explicit messages and was arrested on arrival at the meeting place.
- The same affidavit describes investigators using Thomson Reuters CLEAR to look up his phone number, Clearview AI facial recognition to identify him from his photos, and Flock to track his car to the meeting spot, stacking a generated persona on top of commercial identification and surveillance tools.
- 404 Media says Livonia police did not respond to a request for comment and that the complaint does not name the school. The report does not list the specific charges, and no court has ruled on the evidence or on the use of a generated image in an undercover operation.
- In a developer post dated 16 October, Apple says guideline 1.2 now explicitly covers nonconsensual intimate imagery, including imagery generated using AI tools, as content apps must proactively prevent and remove. Developers who fail to implement adequate safeguards, or do not remedy violations after notice, risk violating the Developer Code of Conduct and removal from the App Store.
- Guideline 2.5.19 clarifies the prohibition on apps that misrepresent what they do during review and then change after approval, which Apple describes as the bait-and-switch tactic used by nudification apps that only reveal harmful capabilities once approved. Offending apps face removal from the App Store and from the Apple Developer Program.
- Apple also updated Section 5 to state that apps facilitating human trafficking or the exploitation of children, including child sexual abuse material, will be removed from the App Store and blocked from alternative distribution. Apple says that last year it prevented over 150K apps with safety issues from reaching customers and terminated over 193K developer accounts for fraud and abuse.
- These are rule changes and stated enforcement posture, not measured outcomes: Apple gives no figure for nudification apps removed, no timeline for re-review of apps already on the store, and no detection method for AI-generated imagery.
- Tech Policy Press reports Electoral Commission CEO Vijay Rangarajan saying the Commission is developing an AI system that analyses social media posts in real time, flags likely deepfakes for staff review, and notifies affected candidates or parties ideally within three hours of first appearance.
- In a May 2026 local election pilot the article reports about 3 million posts analysed, 147 posts flagged, and 10 judged "really quite misleading" after human review and referred to social media companies or police. Rangarajan said those posts did not have a major effect.
- Rangarajan is reported to have said the Commission faces roughly 30,000 to 40,000 attacks a month, sometimes peaking around 10,000 a day, including botnets, phishing and mass emails.
- He is also reported to have said the Commission detected signs of "algorithmic bias" in at least one UK election, likely involving a social media company he did not name, and that the UK has no current legislative tool for this problem. The remarks were made at a panel during the Conservative Party conference; no system documentation, false-positive rate or launch date has been published.
- CBS Minnesota reports the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals granted an injunction on Friday pausing enforcement of Minnesota's law prohibiting the creation of nonconsensual sexual images using AI "while the company's appeal moves forward", in "a brief, one-sentence order" that "did not explain its reasoning". A lower court had allowed enforcement in September.
- The law, signed by Governor Tim Walz in May, exposes companies that generate nonconsensual sexualised AI images to "a civil penalty of up to $500,000" and lets victims seek additional damages. xAI sued days before the law's 1 August implementation, arguing it "imposes an overbroad, content-based ban on free speech and the tools of visual expression".
- Attorney General Keith Ellison's office said: "We are disappointed in the Eighth Circuit's decision and respectfully but strongly disagree with it. Minnesota's nudification ban outlaws AI technology products from generating sexual images that harm and harass people in the vilest way possible." The order is procedural and decides nothing on the merits; one outlet has it.
- The Internet Watch Foundation says its analysts assessed 6,310 AI-generated images meeting the legal definition of child sexual abuse material between January 1 and June 30, 2026 — 40% more than the 4,512 images recorded across the whole of 2025.
- The IWF reports that girls featured in 98% of the AI-generated imagery where both age and gender were recorded, that 190 images depicted infants and toddlers under the age of two and 1,004 depicted children aged three to six, and that 79% of the H1 2026 images depicted children aged seven to 13, up from 70% across 2025. By severity it recorded 350 Category A images, 403 Category B and 5,557 Category C.
- IWF chief executive Kerry Smith is quoted: "If Europe is serious about protecting children, it needs a comprehensive Child Sexual Abuse Regulation that gives platforms the legal certainty to detect, prevent and respond to known and unknown child sexual abuse content." The release is pegged to the EU's proposed Child Sexual Abuse Regulation.
- These are counts of images the IWF itself assessed, not an estimate of the total circulating, and the release does not name the generators or services used to make them.
- 404 Media reports on "The Backbone of Abuse: How Infrastructure Providers Enable the Proliferation of AI-Generated Non-Consensual Intimate Imagery", by Hany Farid of Dartmouth and Sophie Nightingale and Sarah Morgan of Lancaster, published Wednesday in Stanford's peer-reviewed Journal of Online Trust and Safety.
- Over six weeks between February and March the researchers identified 400 URLs by keyword searching and Google Alerts, narrowed them to 88 sites actively hosting non-consensual intimate imagery, and mapped their providers with tools including WHOIS. They write: "Five players emerged as dominant infrastructure providers: Cloudflare, Google, Namecheap, WordPress, and Protonmail." Per 404 Media, Cloudflare supplied hosting, CDN, DNS and analytics; Google supplied SSL certificates and advertising space for the majority of sites; Namecheap was the dominant registrar, WordPress the majority CMS and Proton the mail provider.
- Most of the material on the sites depicted female celebrities, actresses, pop singers, K-pop idols and women in politics or activism. Cloudflare, Proton and Namecheap did not respond to 404 Media; Google said "Without the specific domains from the report, we can't investigate these claims," and pointed to its policies against non-consensual explicit content. The journal's own article page returned HTTP 502 to this briefing, so every figure here is 404 Media's account of the paper.
- DFRLab collected more than 380 posts across Telegram, X, Facebook and VK between 22 and 31 July 2026, spreading into 18 languages within 29 hours; 197 posts appeared on 23 July alone, and it identified 493 posts on X. The first post it found was on 22 July 2026 at 16:08 CET on the Telegram channel @indeec_1937, with a second wave on 27 July.
- DFRLab links the amplification to the Russian operation tracked as Storm-1516, writing that "74 [X] accounts have a documented history of reposting or quoting content from campaigns that we have attributed to Storm-1516 targeting Armenia". On X, 62 accounts posted more than once.
- The operation used a digitally altered photograph of Ursula von der Leyen casting a ballot, edited to show tomato-throwing. DFRLab documents no deepfake and no synthetic video or audio in this campaign — the manipulation was a doctored still and a fake news-outlet byline, which is worth registering against the assumption that influence operations have moved wholesale to generative video.
- This is DFRLab's own attribution and counting; no platform has confirmed the account network, and the events described took place in July.
- Google says the model brings "near real-time visual presence to our native live dialogue models", with "precise lip-syncing, natural expressions, and fluid turn-taking", and supports 97 languages with native multilingual speech-to-speech synchronisation.
- It is generally available in Gemini Enterprise. Google says enterprise customers can use preset avatars or create custom ones through allowlisting, and that "all output generated by our AI products is watermarked with SynthID".
- Google published no benchmark figures, no pricing and no independent evaluation of the lip-sync or turn-taking claims, and did not say how SynthID detection performs on the generated video.
- SBS News, reporting on 23 September, says National Election Commission data as of the end of August shows a 68.3% deletion rate for election deepfake posts flagged from the 3 June local elections, leaving 32% still up.
- SBS gives the comparison baselines as 75% deletion for the 2024 general election and 77.1% for the presidential election — so compliance has fallen across three consecutive national votes.
- By platform for the 3 June local elections, SBS reports the domestic services Naver and Daum deleted 100% of flagged posts, Google 69.8% and Meta 65.3%.
- Only SBS has this in English and we could not open the underlying NEC data. The figures are deletion rates for posts the commission flagged, not a measure of how many election deepfakes existed.
- Gartner, in findings released at its Security & Risk Management Summit in London on 22 September, reports that 41% of surveyed CISOs had at least one social engineering incident involving a deepfake during an employee audio call in the past 12 months, and 36% during a video call. The survey covered 297 senior cybersecurity leaders between March and May 2026.
- The same survey found 79% reported at least one email phishing, spear-phishing or business email compromise incident in the last 12 months, and 58% reported a vishing or smishing incident.
- Gartner's recommendation, as reported, is to move security-awareness programmes away from teaching staff to spot the fake and toward secure verification as a standard requirement for any consequential request. Craig Porter, a Gartner director analyst, is quoted saying organisations "must use the same discipline used to assess identity and access risks to combat AI-driven social engineering threats".
- These are self-reported incident counts from a self-selecting professional sample of 297, not measured attack volumes, and they cover a period ending in May 2026. Gartner's own press release could not be opened; the figures above come from two outlets that were.
- The Texas Tribune reports that State Rep. Vikki Goodwin, the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor, filed a police report with the Travis County Sheriff's Office on Saturday, 19 September 2026, over two AI-generated videos depicting her that were released by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick's campaign.
- Her sworn affidavit states: "I did not personally do or say the things depicted in the video; although the 'person' in the video appears to be me, it was not actually me," and alleges Patrick "posted the video with the intent to deceive Texans, injure a candidate, or influence the result".
- The complaint invokes a 2019 Texas law barring deepfake videos published or distributed within 30 days of an election. In-person early voting begins 19 October 2026, which is what makes the timing legally live rather than theoretical.
- Patrick campaign spokesman Allen Blakemore told the New York Times the material was "an obvious parody produced to entertain" and that "no reasonable person could view it any other way", adding they had not distributed it inside the 30-day window. The videos were deleted from Patrick's X account the day after the complaint. No charge has been filed.
- The South China Morning Post reports that a 65-year-old Chinese woman used AI to impersonate both a young doctor and that doctor's mother, "successfully scamming 170,000 yuan (US$25,000) from a man".
- The victim, Shanghai resident Liu Hui, connected in 2021 with an account using the name Yu Xiuzhen, which claimed to belong to a 29-year-old doctor at a "prestigious Grade 3A hospital in Shanghai" with influence over her hospital's property engineering projects.
- Over five years the account posted "nearly 7,000 video posts" and attracted "10,000 followers". The SCMP's standfirst says: "Reviewing Yu's videos, police spotted a tiny 'AI-generated content' disclaimer that the victim had missed."
- Only one outlet has this, and the report does not say what charges, if any, have been brought, or which platform the account was on.
- The Taipei Times reports that Taiwan's Ministry of Justice said authorities would crack down on deepfake election content ahead of the year-end local elections, with law enforcement to "step up forensic tracing, take down deepfake content promptly, and strictly investigate and hold perpetrators accountable in accordance with the law".
- The ministry said agencies would track emerging deepfake trends, enhance intelligence analysis and "cooperate with national security forces to counter foreign cognitive warfare", and work with news outlets, major digital platforms and messaging apps on fast removal.
- Under the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act, people who disseminate deepfake audio or video misinformation targeting election candidates "may face a maximum penalty of seven years in prison", and platform operators who fail to comply with removal orders also face penalties.
- Cases cited include an AI-generated video of DPP Changhua County commissioner candidate Chen Su-yueh, and the questioning of former KMT New Media Department director Wei Chun-yu over an allegedly AI-faked voice of President William Lai. Only one outlet has this, and the Taipei Times does not publish a clock time, so the exact posting time could not be confirmed.
- AB 686 (Berman) was approved by the Governor and chaptered on September 19, 2026 as Chapter 334, Statutes of 2026. The Governor's office says it "Extends the sunset date, from January 1, 2027, to January 1, 2031, on the prohibition on distributing materially deceptive audio or visual media (i.e., 'deepfakes')".
- AB 502 (Pellerin and Berman) was approved and chaptered the same day as Chapter 333, Statutes of 2026. Its official title is "An act to amend Section 20012 of the Elections Code, relating to elections, and declaring the urgency thereof, to take effect immediately", so it is in force now. The Governor's office says it modifies the law barring anyone, with malice, from knowingly distributing a campaign advertisement or other election communication containing materially deceptive content unless certain conditions are met.
- Both were signed inside a package of elections bills that the Governor's office frames as protecting California elections rather than as AI policy. Neither measure binds model developers: they govern the distribution of synthetic election media, not the systems that produce it.
- DFRLab reported on 17 September that an operation it tracks as Storm-1516 ran four false narratives against Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia from 30 July to 17 August 2026, and that the operation is "publicly attributed to Russia's military intelligence" with technical links to project Lakhta.
- The fourth campaign used "X's Grok Imagine video-generation tool" to create "a short video from a photo of a Latvian soldier" supporting a false claim that only twenty-five percent of young men called up for military service report as required. DFRLab says approximately two-thirds of those who receive conscription notices attend the required medical examination.
- DFRLab measured "275 mentions across X, Telegram, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, VKontakte, and Pravda Network webpages" and analysed "1,651 unique X accounts", of which 105, or approximately 6.4 percent, amplified more than one campaign. At least two cloned media websites impersonated The Defense Post and EUobserver.
- Reach was uneven: Lithuanian-language Facebook posts on one narrative drew 423 engagements against 17 for English-language posts. DFRLab is the only organisation to have published this analysis.
- Citizen Lab reported on 17 September that BlackCore, an Israeli influence-for-hire company, ran "more than 14 uninterrupted weeks of training and practical operation" for Angolan government employees, beginning 19 January 2026, having advertised an intensive four-week course.
- Citizen Lab says the operation "deployed clusters of fake, automated accounts that used AI to mass-produce contextually relevant comments designed to artificially boost engagement", and that operatives used AI-generated imagery for persona profile pictures. It identifies at least five named personas across Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, and says BlackCore claims to control "several thousands of social media sockpuppet accounts".
- The Record reports participants produced more than 40 pieces of content through a fictitious outlet called "Agita News", and that some deceptive Facebook posts drew roughly 50,000 likes.
- Meta published an adversarial threat report on 27 August 2026 describing the network as "an influence-for-hire operation, likely run on behalf of a number of distinct clients"; Citizen Lab assesses it was "highly likely" operated by BlackCore. Citizen Lab says BlackCore did not name the Angolan trainees anywhere in the documentation it analysed.
- Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 1050, by Senator Angelique Ashby (D-Sacramento), on 16 September. It requires "the explicit disclosure on any video or audio advertisement that uses AI-generated performers to sell a product or service" and "prohibits the continued use of any advertisement found to be in violation of the law".
- Newsom is quoted: "Californians deserve to know when the person selling them something isn't a person at all." The bill was signed at the headquarters of its sponsor, SAG-AFTRA, whose National Executive Director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said it "gives consumers greater transparency by making clear when they are seeing synthetics rather than human performers".
- The release defines a synthetic performer as "an AI-created digital figure, voice, or representation that often appears so realistic that its difficult to distinguish whether it is AI or an actual person", and situates the law alongside the 2024 California AI Transparency Act on watermarking and detection tools.
- The Governor's release states no effective date, no penalty amount and no enforcement agency, and is the only source we could open published inside the window.
- The Manhattan District Attorney's Office announced on 14 September that it seized 12 domain names, tied to five online vendors and involving approximately 1,200 victims, in what it calls the largest known seizure of AI-generated celebrity deepfake websites to date. The seizures were carried out pursuant to a court order.
- The office says the victims were overwhelmingly women and primarily public-facing individuals, including actors, politicians, athletes, musicians, social justice advocates and social media influencers.
- District Attorney Alvin Bragg is quoted saying "1,200 individuals had their faces and bodies stolen and turned into illegal pornography on 12 different websites – without their knowledge or consent".
- The release does not name the vendors, does not say whether anyone has been charged, and does not specify which statutes were used; it directs the investigation to the office's Cyber Crime Bureau.
- In a report published on 14 September, Parliament's Joint Committee on Human Rights called for a new bill on AI to "address the scale and seriousness" of the threats it identifies, saying the current legal framework is "fragmented and difficult to navigate".
- The committee's chair, Labour MP Alex Sobel, said: "Nowhere in the world, including the UK, has a current legislative and regulatory approach to AI that is fit for purpose."
- IT Pro lists the recommendations: a single independent statutory AI oversight body able to set codes of practice, enforce transparency and impose sanctions; a distinction between low-risk and high-risk systems; outright bans on some uses including subliminal techniques and inappropriate biometric profiling; due diligence across the AI supply chain; and clarification of data protection law on automated decision-making. The report notes the AI Security Institute operates voluntarily, without statutory power to test or block a risky release.
- This is a select-committee recommendation, not law. The BBC reports Education Minister Georgia Gould pointed to existing government action on non-consensual deepfakes, cyber security legislation and the AI Security Institute; no dedicated AI bill has been introduced, and the government is not obliged to accept the recommendations.
- On 10 September California enacted thirteen bills. SB 1119 (Padilla, with Wicks and Bauer-Kahan), known as Adam's Law after Adam Raine, requires companion chatbot operators to maintain crisis protocols for suicidal ideation, provide parental controls, commission independent child-safety audits and conduct annual risk assessments.
- The package extends beyond chatbots: AB 1709 (Lowenthal) restricts platform features for minors and creates an e-Safety Advisory Commission; SB 867 (Padilla) regulates companion chatbot toys; SB 1276 (Rubio) expands child sexual exploitation offences to cover AI-generated and AI-altered material; and AB 1856 (Wicks) requires age-verification signals from software applications. Civil penalties of up to $250,000 per action apply to third parties facilitating distribution of deepfake pornography.
- This is the most detailed operational mandate yet placed on conversational AI products in the US — auditing and risk assessment obligations rather than disclosure alone — and California's market size makes it a de facto national floor.
- The Governor's announcement does not state effective dates or compliance deadlines for the individual bills, and does not specify which regulator enforces the chatbot audit requirement.