Deepfakes as Evidence in Ghanaian Courts: Rethinking Authentication and Admissibility under the Evidence Act

The evidentiary challenge posed by deepfakes extends beyond the question of whether a digital file has been altered after it was created or obtained. In conventional electronic evidence, establishing that a file has been properly preserved, accurately reproduced and remains unaltered may provide an important basis for assessing its reliability . However, with deepfakes, the content may have been fabricated or manipulated at the point of creation and subsequently preserved without any further alteration. This means that the integrity of the digital file does not necessarily establish the authenticity of the content it contains . Courts must therefore consider two related but distinct questions: whether the digital record has remained intact and whether the audiovisual content itself is an authentic representation of the person, event or statement it purports to depict.