Twitter is working on a policy to fight deepfakes and it wants users' help

Twitter is the latest social platform to confirm that it's working on a policy to address the rise of deepfakes.

The company plans to update its policies in order to address "synthetic and manipulated media," Twitter revealed. Twitter's announcement follows earlier comments from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who said earlier this year that the social network was "evaluating" potential policies.

Deepfakes, or "synthetic and manipulated media," as Twitter calls them, are videos that have been realistically altered using artificial intelligence. The issue was thrust into the spotlight earlier this year after an altered video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went viral on Facebook.

That video, which was eventually debunked by Facebook fact checkers, wasn't technically a deepfake since it was merely slowed down and not manipulated with AI, but it nevertheless brought attention to the potential danger of sharing video that has been deceptively edited on social media.

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Twitter has previously banned fake porn videos with celebrity faces, but doesn't yet have a broad policy to address manipulated video in other contexts.

In a tweet, Twitter said it plans to define synthetic media as "media that’s been significantly altered or created in a way that changes the original meaning/purpose, or makes it seem like certain events took place that didn’t actually happen."

The company didn't indicate what its policy would look like, or when it might curtail these types of images, but suggested it would prioritize physical safety and potential for "offline harm."

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Twitter plans to solicit feedback from its users and and other experts before coming up with a more exact policy — similar to the wide-ranging approach its taken to improving conversations.

If recent history is any indication, though, it will still be some time before Twitter has a concrete policy ready to implement. The company announced it would ban "dehumanizing language" on its platform last September, but it didn't start implementing the new policy until nearly a year later. And even then, the new rules so far only apply to a narrow subset of language aimed at religious groups (Twitter says it plans to expand the rules, but hasn't provided a timeline for doing so).

"We need to consider how synthetic media is shared on Twitter in potentially damaging contexts," Twitter said Monday.

"We want to listen and consider your perspectives in our policy development process. We want to be transparent about our approach and values."