MOSCOW, September 17. /TASS/. Russia needs to introduce criminal liability for the use of audio deepfakes as soon as possible, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

"Unfortunately, these technologies are actively used with criminal intentions, so, of course, the introduction of criminal liability for this is an absolutely logical step that must be taken as soon as possible," the spokesman said, commenting on the bill on the protection of human voice from AI audio generators, which was recently introduced in the State Duma (the lower chamber of Russia’s parliament).

Peskov admitted that he himself had come across a situation when fraudsters called and spoke with familiar voices.

"On the other hand, I do not know whether there are now technologies that allow to protect people from such criminals. At the moment, as far as I know, such technologies haven't been invented," the spokesman emphasized, noting that such technologies will appear soon.

Earlier, a bill was submitted to the State Duma on the use of recordings with an AI-generated human voice only with the consent of the person. The bill establishes the protection of the voice as an object of a citizen's personal non-property rights by analogy with a citizen's image, including in cases of voice imitation or through real-time speech synthesis.