Warner Pushes Tech Companies to Take Action Against Deepfakes, Maliciously Manipulated Media

WASHINGTON, DC (VR) – Ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-VA), Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, urged leading social media firms, generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) platforms, and media editing software providers to take action against maliciously manipulated media, such as deepfakes, with a series of measures centered around transparency, collaboration, and means of enforcement. As the capabilities of GenAI continue to evolve, maliciously manipulated media poses a significant risk to vulnerable communities, public trust, and democratic institutions, particularly during competitive election cycles. For example, the National Republican Senatorial Committee last week released AI-generated videos of both a U.S. Senator and a candidate for U.S Senate, raising concerns among civil society groups, legal advocates, and election integrity groups that manipulated content will become increasingly present and unsettling.

Sen. Warner wrote, “Leading technology providers spanning media generation, editing, and distribution have publicly pledged to address the increasing prevalence of maliciously manipulated media. While imperfect and no substitute for comprehensive federal legislation, these voluntary efforts, including the Coalition for Content Provenance & Authenticity and the Tech Accord to Combat Deceptive Use of AI in 2024 Elections, complemented by a patchwork of state laws, represent some of the only meaningful interventions to address media manipulation-based threats ahead of the 2026 U.S. midterm elections.”

“Prior to the 2024 U.S. elections, Russian-attributed actors used media manipulation techniques to denigrate a U.S. Vice-Presidential candidate and a domestic actor utilized voice cloning software for robocalls impersonating President Biden in the New Hampshire primary,” Sen. Warner continued. “While these malicious actions largely failed to meaningfully effect the elections, the capabilities of generative artificial intelligence (AI) products have grown tremendously in the intervening years. Particularly against the backdrop of an abrupt pullback in federal resources, an effective multi-stakeholder approach is needed to ensure that industry, state and local governments, and civil society adequately anticipate – and counteract – media manipulation techniques that cause harm to vulnerable communities, public trust, and democratic institutions.”

Bipartisan policymakers have begun rolling out measures to ensure that GenAI serves the public interest, but this effort alone is not enough to stop intentional and targeted media manipulation techniques. The private sector must proactively partner with civil society and the public sector to prevent irreparable damage to our democratic elections.

The letter concluded with a list of concrete measures that GenAI and media editing software vendors as well as social media platforms and other major content distributors should adopt to anticipate, identify, and counter manipulated media.

Sen. Warner sent the letter to OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Meta, Adobe, ElevenLabs, Cohere, Microsoft, MidJourney, Canva, Snap, Google, Synthesia, TikTok US, BlueSky, Pinterest, and Reddit.

The letter is a continuation of Sen. Warner’s efforts to push tech companies to take concrete measures to combat malicious missuses of GenAI that could impact elections. In May 2024, he sent a letter to every signatory of the Tech Accord to Combat Deceptive Use of AI in 2024 Elections demanding specific answers about the actions companies are taking to be in compliance with this agreed upon roadmap that improves the information ecosystem surrounding elections.

Read the full letter here or below.

Dear XX:

Leading technology providers spanning media generation, editing, and distribution have publicly pledged to address the increasing prevalence of maliciously manipulated media. While imperfect and no substitute for comprehensive federal legislation, these voluntary efforts, including the Coalition for Content Provenance & Authenticity and the Tech Accord to Combat Deceptive Use of AI in 2024 Elections, complemented by a patchwork of state laws, represent some of the only meaningful interventions to address media manipulation-based threats ahead of the 2026 U.S. midterm elections.

Prior to the 2024 U.S. elections, Russian-attributed actors used media manipulation techniques to denigrate a U.S. Vice-Presidential candidate and a domestic actor utilized voice cloning software for robocalls impersonating President Biden in the New Hampshire primary. While these malicious actions largely failed to meaningfully effect the elections, the capabilities of generative artificial intelligence (AI) products have grown tremendously in the intervening years. Particularly against the backdrop of an abrupt pullback in federal resources, an effective multi-stakeholder approach is needed to ensure that industry, state and local governments, and civil society adequately anticipate – and counteract – media manipulation techniques that cause harm to vulnerable communities, public trust, and democratic institutions.

Policymakers have on a bipartisan basis begun the process of developing measures to ensure that generative AI technologies (and related media modification tools) serve the public interest. But the private sector can – particularly in collaboration with civil society and state and local election officials – dramatically shape the usage and wider impact of these technologies through proactive measures in coming months. As a follow-up to my requests in the wake of the Munich Tech Accord, I strongly encourage you to take the following measures to anticipate, identify, and respond to potential media manipulation efforts targeting the election.

Generative AI Model and Media Editing Software Vendors:

• Attach robust and consensus-based content credentials, and other relevant provenance or authenticity signals (including metadata and prominent visible watermarks), to any media created using your products.
• To the extent that your product is incorporated in a downstream product offered by a third-party, adopt license terms that stipulate the adoption of such measures by providers that resell or otherwise repackage your generative AI or media editing tools.
• Share detection methodologies or internal classifiers associated with your generative AI or media modification products through trusted channels with content distributors, other generative AI and media editing software vendors, and trustworthy news organizations.
• Develop and appropriately resource ‘rapid-response’ channels by which verified independent media and civil society organizations can leverage your detection tools to authenticate media that may have been created with your products.
• Develop clear policies and mechanisms by which victims of impersonation campaigns may report content, and consider separate reporting tools for public figures or uniquely vulnerable user groups.
• Maintain resources to proactively identify impersonation campaigns using your products, with mechanisms to contact victims promptly.

Social Media Platforms and Other Major Content Distributors:

• Establish and enforce clear Terms of Service regarding generative and manipulated media and consider policies to require visual markers of generative or manipulated content for users.
• Adopt mechanisms to screen uploaded content for content credentials, watermarks, or other media authenticity signals, with the goal of ensuring that such content is consistent with your Terms of Service.
• Develop internal classifiers or enlist third-party detection solutions to detect generative and manipulated media that lack content credentials, watermarks, or other media authenticity signals – sharing detection methodologies through trusted channels with other content distributors.
• Engage independent media and civil society organizations to assist in their efforts to verify media, generate authenticated media, and educate the public.
• Engage candidates and election officials on effective utilization of content credentialing or other media authentication tools for their public communications on your distribution platforms
• Consider open-sourcing detection tools and methods to identify, catalogue, and/or continuously track the distribution of machine-generated or machine-manipulated content.
• Maintain a publicly-accessible database containing generative or manipulated media that violates your Terms of Service (particularly with respect to election-related content), enabling civil society and media organizations to track media manipulation campaigns (with appropriate privacy and content-safety features to limit re-victimization).
• Maintain resources to proactively identify impersonation campaigns conducted on your platforms, with mechanisms to contact victims promptly.
• Develop clear policies and mechanisms by which victims of impersonation campaigns may report content violations, and consider a separate reporting tools for public figures or uniquely-vulnerable user groups.
• Initiate information-sharing mechanisms between platforms on detecting manipulated content that may be used for malicious ends (such as election disinformation, voter suppression, non-consensual intimate imagery, online harassment, etc.)

Thank you for your attention to these important matters. I welcome your public commitment to these measures, in addition to concrete commitments you have already made to anticipate, identify, and counteract malicious use of your products ahead of the 2026 U.S. midterm elections.

Sincerely,