Stanford misinformation expert accused of using AI to fabricate court statement
Communication professor Jeff Hancock, an expert on technology and misinformation, has been accused of using artificial intelligence (AI) to craft a court statement.
In November, Hancock — who is the founding director of Stanford’s Social Media Lab — filed a declaration in a Minnesota court case over the state’s 2023 law that criminalizes the use of deepfakes to influence an election. The professor’s 12-page declaration in defense of the law contained 15 citations, two of which cannot be found.
The plaintiffs of the case, Republican Minnesota State Representative Mary Franson and conservative social media satirist Christopher Kohls, argued that the law is an unconstitutional limit on free speech. Submitting his testimony on behalf of a defendant, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, Hancock claimed that deepfakes, or AI-generated media that alter a person’s likeness or voice, can enhance the persuasiveness of misinformation and defy traditional factchecking methods.
He made his declaration, for which he was compensated at the government rate of $600 per hour, under penalty of perjury that everything he stated in the document was “true and correct.”
