Deepfake

A deepfake is synthetic media (images, video, or audio) generated or altered by artificial intelligence to depict people saying or doing things that did not actually occur. The term combines "deep," from the deep-learning techniques used to create it, and "fake." Deepfakes are commonly produced with generative adversarial networks (GANs), in which one model creates a realistic forgery while a second tries to detect flaws, or with diffusion models that generate imagery from text prompts. The technology has legitimate uses in film, accessibility, and research, but it is also widely misused for fraud, disinformation, and abuse.

The term itself entered mainstream awareness around 2017 through a Reddit community where the technique was popularized, which the company banned in 2018 alongside introducing a policy against involuntary pornography and impersonation. Deepfakes raise particular concern when used to create non-consensual intimate imagery of real people, to impersonate public figures, or to fabricate misleading political or news content that can spread rapidly through social platforms. Reddit's policies prohibit non-consensual sexual deepfakes and deceptive impersonation. Detecting deepfakes is increasingly difficult, and the 2025 U.S. Take It Down Act explicitly extends NCII protections to AI-generated "digital forgeries."