State v. Amyda (deepfake claim without evidence)

What happened

Max Amyda was convicted of third-degree sexual abuse. The central exhibit was a digital video of the charged conduct. No witness had personally observed the conduct, and no witness described the process or system that produced the video, so the State authenticated it by circumstantial evidence.

On appeal, the defendant argued that the video "may have been a 'deepfake' — created through generative artificial intelligence." He raised an authentication objection under Iowa Rule of Evidence 5.901 and a best-evidence objection.

What the court did

The court affirmed. It held the district court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the video over either objection.

On the deepfake claim it characterized the argument as resting on "speculative claims that the video was a 'deepfake' without any evidentiary" support. It quoted Mooney v. State, 321 A.3d 91, 110-11 (Md. 2024), for the proposition that videos remain authenticable by circumstantial evidence even though they are "susceptible to alteration, and the increased availability of new technology, particularly the advent of image-generating artificial intelligence, may present unique challenges in authenticating videos and photographs."

On best evidence, assuming without deciding that the rule applied and that the exhibit was a duplicate, the court held it admissible to the same extent as an original under Iowa Rule of Evidence 5.1003.

Where it stands

The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction on January 28, 2026. The Iowa Supreme Court granted further review in May, heard argument on September 9, and on October 9 affirmed both the Court of Appeals and the district court in a unanimous opinion by Justice Mansfield.

The court acknowledged the concern directly: "We are not oblivious to the risks of video evidence." It contrasted In re M.S., in which New York's highest court held hacker-supplied videos insufficiently authenticated, and concluded: "But here, by contrast, there are no identifiable circumstances to suggest that the video might be a deepfake." It held the video properly authenticated under rule 5.901, and on the best-evidence objection agreed with the State that Amyda "didn't raise a genuine question, only conjecture."

The opinion also describes defense counsel's closing argument, which urged the jury that the video was fake by reference to popular culture rather than evidence, and observes that "apart from trying to cash in on the so-called 'liar's dividend,' Amyda's counsel had little to work with." A footnote defines the liar's dividend as the possibility that public awareness of deepfakes makes it easier to cast doubt on genuine evidence. The court noted the draft federal Rule 901(c) under study by the Advisory Committee on Evidence Rules without adopting it. The decision is an affirmance on the record of this case, reviewed for abuse of discretion.

The obligation it engaged

Both appellate courts put a price on the deepfake defense, and the price was an evidentiary predicate. A party who asserts fabrication without one does not shift the burden. Read with Matter of M.S. and State v. Puloka, the pattern across courts is consistent: the availability of the technology is acknowledged, and the acknowledgment alone does not disturb circumstantial authentication.

The predicate is where an expert enters. Supplying it means an examination of the file that can be explained and repeated, which is Clause 5 of the Standard, reproducible analysis. An authentication opinion resting on a tool's confidence score is the weakest possible form of the very claim being made, because the party opposing it will ask how the score was produced and what it was checked against. Clause 4, checkability before adoption, asks that question first: before adopting the output, identify the specific thing against which it would be checked.

Sources

• Court of Appeals of Iowa · January 28, 2026
  State of Iowa v. Max Amyda, No. 24-1563
• Damien Charlotin · September 17, 2026
  Deepfakes cases database
• Iowa Judicial Branch · September 9, 2026
  Supreme Court oral argument schedule, State of Iowa v. Max Amyda, No. 24-1563
• Iowa Supreme Court · October 9, 2026
  State v. Amyda, No. 24-1563, opinion

What could not be confirmed

Whether further review was sought in the Iowa Supreme Court was not located.