Microsoft is calling on Capitol Hill lawmakers to enact legislation combatting artificial intelligence-generated deep fakes that can deceive the public.

AI deepfakes have often been used to place words in prominent politicians’ mouths, such as former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump and President Joe Biden, among others.

“While the tech sector and non-profit groups have taken recent steps to address this problem, it has become apparent that our laws will also need to evolve to combat deepfake fraud,” Microsoft President Brad Smith wrote in a blog post. “In short, we need new laws to help stop bad actors from using deepfakes to defraud seniors or abuse children.”

Like other AI-related issues, deepfakes haven’t been addressed until recently. A bill banning sexually explicit deepfakes just passed the Senate, but no bills addressing deepfakes in elections have been passed yet, though several bills aiming to do so have been introduced.

“One of the most important things the U.S. can do is pass a comprehensive deepfake fraud statute to prevent cybercriminals from using this technology to steal from everyday Americans,” Smith said.

The Microsoft executive suggested three things for Congress to pursue in order to lessen the effects of deepfakes: Enact a new federal “deepfake fraud statute” that would give law enforcement the authority to prosecute AI-generated fraud and scams, require AI system providers to use state-of-the-art provenance tooling to label synthetic content, and ensure that federal and state laws on child sexual exploitation and abuse and non-consensual intimate imagery are updated to include AI-generated content. 

“Microsoft offers these recommendations to contribute to the much-needed dialogue on AI synthetic media harms,” Smith said. “Enacting any of these proposals will fundamentally require a whole-of-society approach … the danger is not that we will move too fast, but that we will move too slowly or not at all.”

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Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced the Senate’s policy road map for AI earlier this year, which was meant to be the “most comprehensive, most bipartisan, and most forward-thinking report on AI regulation ever produced by Congress.”

The road map will aim to maximize AI’s positives while minimizing damage in society.