“It’s true that we can, generally speaking, eventually debunk” deepfake videos,” said Bobby Chesney, a professor at the University of Texas. “But the truth doesn’t ever quite catch up with the initial lie if the initial lie is emotional and juicy enough.”

Rubio pointed to the possibility that foreign states, Russia in particular, could use deepfake videos to up their meddling game: to aid in sowing discord, undermining democracy, influencing elections, or all three.

“I know for a fact that the Russian Federation at the command of Vladimir Putin tried to sow instability and chaos in American politics in 2016,” he said. “They did that through Twitter bots and they did that through a couple of other measures that will increasingly come to light. But they didn’t use this. Imagine using this. Imagine injecting this in an election.”

The increasing accessibility of deepfake technology could eventually make it so that anybody could abuse it.