A bill on liability for crimes committed using deepfakes was submitted to the State Duma

The authors of the bill, represented by State Duma deputy Yaroslav Nilov and Federation Council member Alexei Pushkov, propose to amend articles of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation on libel, theft, fraud, including in the IT sector, extortion, causing damage by deception and breach of trust.

According to the draft, the punishment for committing crimes using deepfakes under these articles provides for up to six years in prison or a fine of up to 1.5 million rubles.

MP Nilov posted a post on Telegram and noted that the concept of “deepfake” does not yet exist in the Russian legal sphere.

“People believe in a cleverly constructed ghost, share personal data, keys, passwords and as a result lose funds, property, real estate and sometimes end up on the street,” Nilov wrote.

At the time of publication of the material, the bill was registered and submitted to the Chairman of the State Duma.

The fact that Russia plans to introduce criminal liability for the use of deepfakes first became known in May 2024. Prior to this, the Ministry of Digital Development announced plans to create a platform for identifying deepfakes. The corresponding instruction was given by the head of the Russian government, Mikhail Mishustin.

According to the Intellectual Property Court’s ruling, deepfakes are subject to copyright because they are a tool for processing videos, not creating them.