Law / United States / 
New Hampshire
Fraudulent Use of Deepfakes
In force since .
An AI prohibited practices rule binding public and private bodies.
- Obligation class
- Prohibition
- Audit expectation
- none
- Setting the rule reaches
- General
What it requires
- Do not knowingly create, distribute, or present a deepfake of an identifiable person for the purpose of embarrassing, harassing, entrapping, defaming, extorting, or otherwise causing that person financial or reputational harm.
- A person harmed by a violation may sue you for damages under a separate civil action, in addition to criminal prosecution.
- This does not reach an interactive computer service displaying another party's content, a bona fide news report that discloses the deepfake's questionable authenticity, a paid political communication that keeps its sponsor's own disclaimer, or satire or parody not reliant on AI impersonation.
These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.
In the frameworks
- NIST AI RMF
- MAP 3.3Targeted application scope is specified and documented based on the system’s capability, established context, and AI system categorization.
- NIST AI 600-1
- GAI-RISK-08Information Integrity
- GAI-RISK-11Obscene, Degrading, and/or Abusive Content
- MIT mitigations Draft
- FINOS AIGF
- AIR-PREV-005System Acceptance Testing
- ETSI EN 304 223
Our reading of where this law's duties sit in each framework. It never says that running a control meets the law. How we read a framework against the law
Identifiers refer to ETSI EN 304 223 V2.1.1 (2025-12), © ETSI 2025, all rights reserved. ETSI owns the standard; no ETSI text (titles or sentences) is reproduced here. The standard is free to download from ETSI.
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureYes
Private right of actionYes
Criminal exposure note
RSA 638:26-a, II makes fraudulent use of a deepfake a class B felony, and paragraph III makes a resulting wrongful arrest a separate class B felony. New Hampshire's general felony fine cap under RSA 651:2, IV(a) is $4,000 for an individual and $100,000 for a corporation or unincorporated association, or up to double the defendant's gain from the offense in lieu of that cap. A class B felony carries imprisonment of up to seven years under RSA 651:2, II(b).
Penalty structure
Individual cap under the general felony fine schedule, RSA 651:2, IV(a); a corporation or unincorporated association is capped at $100,000 instead, and the court may substitute a fine of up to double the defendant's gain from the offense in lieu of either cap.
- Rule
- Fixed only
- As of
- Currency
- USD
- Fixed cap
- 4,000
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
RSA 638:26-a defines a class B felony and names no prosecuting agency; the depicted person enforces RSA 507:8-j through a civil action for damages.
Settledness
- As of
- Open questions
- Does the satire and parody exemption in RSA 638:26-a, IV(d), which covers media whose production is "substantially dependent on the ability of one or more individuals to physically or verbally impersonate another person without reliance on artificial intelligence", leave AI-generated satire of an identifiable individual inside the offense?
What it makes you log
Logging duty
RSA 638:26-a and RSA 507:8-j define and grade the offense and civil action for a fraudulent deepfake; neither creates a duty for any party to keep a log, record or other documentation, and neither names anybody who may check one.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
A person is guilty of a class B felony under RSA 638:26-a if the person knowingly creates, distributes, or presents a deepfake, a video, audio, or other media digitally altered so an identifiable individual appears to be someone else or to say or do something they never said or did, for the purpose of embarrassing, harassing, entrapping, defaming, extorting, or otherwise causing that person financial or reputational harm.
A separate civil action under RSA 507:8-j lets the depicted person sue for damages on the same conduct. Both sections exempt an interactive computer service displaying another party's content, a bona fide news report that flags the deepfake's questionable authenticity, a paid political communication that preserves its sponsor's disclaimer, and satire or parody not reliant on AI impersonation.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app generates audio with AI, generates video with AI or processes biometric data.
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