Deepfakes in the Global South: Understanding Stakeholder Perceptions, Harms, and Governance Challenges in Sri Lanka, India, and Bangladesh

Abstract

With the rapid proliferation of AI-generated synthetic media across South Asia, communities in Sri Lanka, India, and Bangladesh face deepfake-related harms that existing Trust & Safety frameworks—designed predominantly for Global North contexts—are ill-equipped to address. Through three participatory workshops with 49 stakeholders including journalists, lawyers, fact-checkers, feminist advocates, and civil society practitioners, we investigate how deepfake harms are perceived, experienced, and contested across these distinct yet interconnected contexts. Our findings reveal four cross-cutting patterns: disproportionate gendered targeting of women and marginalized communities; systematic failure of platform moderation for South Asian languages; inaccessible institutional recourse for victims; and strong community preference for locally governed, participatory solutions over externally designed technical fixes. We contribute empirical evidence of deepfake harm in under-researched Global South contexts, a cross-country comparative framework for Trust & Safety analysis, and a set of design and policy implications that center community knowledge, survivor support, and linguistic justice as foundations for a reimagined deepfake governance paradigm.