What do we do about deepfake video?

Deepfake - the ability of AI to fabricate apparently real footage of people - is a growing problem with implications for us all

There exist, on the internet, any number of videos that show people doing things they never did. Real people, real faces, close to photorealistic footage; entirely unreal events.

These videos are called deepfakes, and they're made using a particular kind of AI. Inevitably enough, they began in porn - there is a thriving online market for celebrity faces superimposed on porn actors' bodies - but the reason we're talking about them now is that people are worried about their impact on our already fervid political debate. Those worries are real enough to prompt the British government and the US Congress to look at ways of regulating them.