CPS guidance on deepfakes still falls woefully short

Good Law Project has pushed back after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) defended its guidance on tackling political deepfakes, arguing that the current advice “falls woefully short”.

High-profile politicians including Angela Rayner, Penny Mordaunt and Wes Streeting have already been targeted by fake pictures, audio, and video generated using AI tools. But the CPS guidance is almost silent on political deepfakes, focusing instead on generated material that is pornographic or “intimate”. Despite the expert legal advice we commissioned, it maintained there was no need to update it at all.

Now we’ve written to the CPS a second time, urging it to reconsider this refusal and update the guidance instead of leaving prosecutors “reading between its lines”. It’s all the more urgent since the Cabinet Office told election candidates to report political deepfakes to the police. How can police and prosecutors take action when the situation is so unclear?

In a year when elections are taking place all around the world, the fight against political disinformation has never been more vital. We’ll keep defending our democracy, fighting to make sure there’s nowhere to hide for people who want to poison our politics.

• In our fractured media environment, it’s easy for political deepfakes to fly under the radar. If you spot one, let us know at legal@goodlawproject.org