Reforming Sri Lankan law to address deep fakes: ensuring admissibility of contemporaneous recordings in evidence

Abstract

The modern world has flourished with technological improvement and has developed a technology called “Deep fake”, through deep learning algorithms. Deep-fake technology which has both benefits and harm, is a creation of artificial intelligence. While deep-fake can be used to talk to your deceased relation again, the technology can be used to manipulate the pictures, videos and audio recordings which can mislead the judiciary by tendering as evidence and an innocent may be imprisoned. At the same time, a criminal or civil offender will be released from law enforcement by using deep fakes by defrauding photo, video and audio recordings. The main objective of this scrutiny is to find out the gaps in the Sri Lankan legal regime in combatting such deep-faked contemporaneous recordings and their admissibility before the judiciary in technological and legal perception. The “black letter” methodology was used to conduct the research by referring to local legislations, research papers and books. The research also discussed the admissibility of contemporaneous recordings as evidence and the methods of authentication of such evidence. Moreover, the paper supplies a directive authority on laws to be enforced and legal remedies to mitigate rendering deep-fake illusions to courts and technological recommendations as well. The final result is that Sri Lankan law should be improved regarding the authentication of contemporaneous recordings before admission, changes have to be made to the presumptions on the admissibility of contemporaneous recordings as evidence and penal laws on the creating and immoral use of deep fakes, subject to exceptions mentioned in the recommendations.