# 10. AI-Enabled Deepfake Psychological Operations

> Defensive, educational synthesis. Operational influence guidance is intentionally excluded.

**Primary level:** Tool

**Evidence maturity:** Documented current use

Synthetic or manipulated audio, video, imagery, or multimodal media is used to impersonate trusted people, fabricate evidence, provoke action, or undermine trust.

## Evidence boundary

The report documents election, conflict, school, and corporate cases involving confirmed synthetic audio or video, while emphasizing that effects are often difficult to isolate.

## Why it matters

- Audio and video can trigger immediate decisions before verification catches up.
- The mere possibility of deepfakes also enables the liar’s dividend, allowing authentic evidence to be dismissed as fake.

## Defensive focus

- Use out-of-band verification for consequential instructions.
- Establish trusted signed channels before crises.
- Preserve files and metadata before reposting.
- Communicate with a truth-first “truth sandwich” rather than repeatedly amplifying the falsehood.
- Treat detector scores as one signal, not legal proof.
- Provide rapid support and correction for private victims.

## Research gaps

- Provenance that survives common platform transformations.
- Privacy-preserving authentication and redaction.
- Real-world effectiveness of deepfake labels and prebunking.
- Legal standards for synthetic evidence and liar’s-dividend claims.

## Selected sources inherited from the supplied report

- [Deepfake! A Liar's Dividend for Audiovisual Material - Ovid](https://www.ovid.com/journals/popmed/pdf/10.1037/ppm0000665~deepfake-a-liars-dividend-for-audiovisual-material) — report reference 1
- [Verifying Provenance of Digital Media: Why the C2PA Specifications Fall Short - arXiv](https://arxiv.org/html/2604.24890v1) — report reference 4
- [Robustness Assessment and Enhancement of Text Watermarking for Google's SynthID](https://arxiv.org/html/2508.20228v1) — report reference 5
- [Using ZK Proofs to Fight Disinformation | by Dan Boneh - Medium](https://medium.com/@boneh/using-zk-proofs-to-fight-disinformation-17e7d57fe52f) — report reference 6
- [Incident 573: Deepfake Recordings Allegedly Influence Slovakian Election](https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/573/) — report reference 13
- [Zelenskyy deepfake reflects new front in Ukraine conflict - Information Age | ACS](https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2022/zelenskyy-deepfake-reflects-new-front-in-ukraine-conflict.html) — report reference 27
- [A Deep Dive Into the Pikesville, MD, Racist/Antisemitic Deepfake Audio - EDRM](https://edrm.net/2026/07/a-deep-dive-into-the-pikesville-md-racist-antisemitic-deepfake-audio/) — report reference 15
- [Athletic Director Charged in Pikesville High School AI Case | Baltimore County Government](https://www.baltimorecountymd.gov/departments/police/news/athletic-director-charged-pikesville-high-school-ai-case) — report reference 30

Primary report SHA-256: `8dec5d4accf0bd6fea3d357e9648ae18d77b3939a7c628c1caf109ed2e47e09a`

External links and current claims were not independently reverified in this release.