The courts have been grappling with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in litigation as its adoption has accelerated in recent years. Practitioners who have filed material containing hallucinated references have been sanctioned by the judiciary, and several jurisdictions have now published formal guidelines regulating the intersection of AI and the law. A 2025 UNSW report found 520 instances of generative AI misuse in legal proceedings across ten jurisdictions between January 2023 and September 2025, including 87 Australian cases, the majority of which involved self-represented litigants. While these cases have led to judicial frustration and court delays, they do not appear to have caused significant personal injustice or irrevocable damage to the parties involved in the legal proceedings. What will happen when AI tools cause real damage? A deepfake is an AI-generated video, image or recording that convincingly emulates a person's appearance or voice. Deepfakes are created using advanced machine learning and make it appear that a person is saying or doing things they never actually did. There are thousands of open-source platforms capable of generating deepfake content. This material can be produced easily, at little to no cost, and at scale. Lawyers and the courts need to consider the impact this may have on the way evidence is treated in litigation and the psychological and procedural burdens it may cause to individuals. When digital evidence can no longer be taken at face value The risk of fabricated evidence is not new. Litigants, practitioners and courts alike have historically encountered allegations of forged signatures, altered documents and manipulated records, and have relied on expert examinations, subpoenas and corroborating evidence to test their authenticity. The challenge today is that AI has made it easier, cheaper and more convincing than ever before. As synthetic content becomes increasingly realistic, distinguishing genuine evidence from