Sandra Ristovska

During her time at CASBS, Sandra Ristovska will be working on her new book, Deep-Faking Images, which offers a historical perspective on current public and legal concerns about AI and deepfakes’ effect on the integrity and reliability of video evidence. Based on an analysis of legal rulings and news coverage of U.S. cases, the book situates the rise of generative AI and deepfakes within a longer legal and social history of technological manipulation of evidentiary images since the invention of photography in the 19th century. It argues that technological manipulation of images-as-evidence may be exacerbating existing social inequality and racial inequities in the U.S. legal system.

Ristovska is an associate professor in media studies with a courtesy appointment in law at the University of Colorado Boulder. A founding director of the Visual Evidence Lab, she is author of the award-winning monograph, Seeing Human Rights: Video Activism as a Proxy Profession (The MIT Press, 2021), and co-editor of Visual Imagery and Human Rights Practice (Palgrave, 2018). Her research has received awards from the American Bar Association, International Association for Media and Communication Research, International Communication Association, and National Communication Association. 

For more information, visit her faculty page at: https://www.colorado.edu/cmci/people/media-studies/sandra-ristovska