Il deepfake gode della libertà di parola protetta dal Primo Emendamento? No, secondo un recente studio

La risposta è negativa per Blitz, DEEPFAKES AND OTHER NONTESTIMONIAL FALSEHOODS:WHEN IS BELIEF MANIPULATION (NOT)FIRST AMENDMENT SPEECH?, Yale Journal of Law & TechnologyVolume 23, Fall 2020, p. 160 ss.

Conclusioni: <<Is all such deception protected by the First Amendment? If not, does it at least protect the deepfake video on the ground that video is now a recognized medium of expression? My argument in this article is that it does not. Video is, of course, in many circumstances, a medium of artistic expression, and deepfake technology can play a role in such artistic expression. Not only it is a tool for professional filmmakers to tell fictional stories. It is a means by which authors canvisually illustrate or embellish their arguments. But my argument here has been that video doesn’t always serve as a vessel for an author’s ideas. It has long served as a record of what a camera captured rather than as a picture and storyteller orargumentmaker wishes to show us. First Amendment law should leave government with room to preserve this nontestimonialfunction of video>>, p. 299-300.

Il che non significa che manchino di protezione ex 1st Em. in assoluto: <<The same deepfake that deceives an audience in one context, after all, can educate and entertain it in another. The same deepfake that is viewed as evidence external to a speaker might, at another time, be seen as a vessel for a speaker’sexpression. Deepfakes are thus in a First Amendment middle groundone where courts should seek to protect them when and to the extent they are expressive, but let government expose them as deepfakes when they pose as genuine camera footage.>>, ivi

Il deepfake non va trattato come lo speech tradizionale

Ottimo articolo di Mary Anne Franks sul deepfake (A dangerous form of unanswerable speech,  bostonglobe, 12.10.2020).

Deepfake è la notizia falsa (bufala) nlla forma di audiovisivo: per questo più persuasiva e dunque pericolosa della notizia solo scritta

la giurista A.M. Franks ricorda che non si può a questo proposito seguire l’approccio dei giudici Holmes e Brandeis  (e di moltissimi altri) del marketplace of ideas per cui la verità sconfigge la falsità (o the best cure for bad speech is more speech): < but especially given the state of disinformation in America, such a belief can most charitably be described as willfully ignorant. Lies, especially those that serve the interests of those in power, have always had a competitive advantage over the truth, and truthful speech frequently gets drowned out by fake, misleading, and salacious content.