Sam Gregory

executive director WITNESS

Sam Gregory is an internationally recognized human rights advocate and technologist, who helps ensure we are better prepared globally for deepfakes and deceptive generative AI. He is an expert on innovations in preserving trust, authenticity and evidence in an era of increasingly complex audiovisual communication and deception, who has testified to both the US House and Senate on AI and synthetic media and is a TED speaker on how to prepare better for the threat of deepfakes.

In 2018, he initiated WITNESS’s Prepare, Don’t Panic initiative around deepfakes and multimodal generative AI - the first globally focused effort to ground these technologies in realities of frontline journalists and human rights defenders and which has directly influenced platform policies, emerging technologies for trust such as the C2PA and public discussion of who and what to prioritize. WITNESS also leads a Deepfake Rapid Response Force providing expert media forensic analysis of real and claimed high public interest synthetic media content.

As Executive Director of WITNESS, he leads their strategic plan to "Fortify the Truth," and champions their global team who support millions of people using video and technology for human rights and civic journalism.

Sam served on the International Criminal Court's Technology Advisory Board, co-chaired the Partnership on AI’s Expert Group on AI and the Media and led the Threats and Harms Taskforce of a leading coalition to develop standards for media provenance (C2PA).  He has written for WIRED, The Hill and a range of academic journals and is frequently interviewed by major media on the threats of deepfakes and generative AI.

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Events IJF 2024
Events in past editions

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