Judge Victoria Kolakowski sensed something was wrong with Exhibit 6C.

Submitted by the plaintiffs in a California housing dispute, the video showed a witness whose voice was disjointed and monotone, her face fuzzy and lacking emotion. Every few seconds, the witness would twitch and repeat her expressions.

Kolakowski, who serves on California’s Alameda County Superior Court , soon realized why: The video had been produced using generative artificial intelligence . Though the video claimed to feature a real witness — who had appeared in another, authentic piece of evidence — Exhibit 6C was an AI “deepfake,” Kolakowski said.

The case, Mendones v. Cushman & Wakefield, Inc., appears to be one of the first instances in which a suspected deepfake was submitted as purportedly authentic

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