Courtrooms are paradigmatic formal epistemic environments: they are structured by evidentiary rules, institutional roles, and procedural norms designed to protect the integrity of fact-finding. Yet courts are also social institutions and thus vulnerable to the same malicious epistemic interventions that destabilize less formal social epistemic environments. As generative media systems proliferate, courts will increasingly confront not only fabricated audiovisual artifacts (“deepfakes”), but also the broader erosion of epistemic trust in digital media that has long functioned as a gold-standard evidentiary artifact. The problem is therefore not merely misinformation, but the loosening of epistemic norms as trust breaks down (Rini, 2020).

Legal scholarship has responded by emphasizing (i) provenance and forensic practices within existing doctrine, (ii) expanded judicial gatekeeping over authenticity, and (iii) stronger sanctions and professional-responsibility constraints on opportunistic “deepfake defenses” (Pfefferkorn, 2020; Delfino, 2023, 2024; Dalal et al., 2024). This Article argues that these proposals must be integrated within a social-epistemic approach to adjudication. In addition to provenance-based indicators (chain of custody, metadata integrity, capture and transfer history), judges should adopt structured, procedurally constrained assessments of agent-centered reliability: the credibility and incentives of sponsoring parties and counsel, their diligence in preserving provenance, consistency with the broader record, and litigation conduct. A two-track protocol—artifact-centered and agent-centered—aims to reduce both false admissions of fakes and strategic discounting of authentic evidence while preserving adjudicative legitimacy under deepfake uncertainty.

The recent history of LLMs has shown that these systems can produce output that their users find intelligent and useful but wisdom in their outputs is encountered less often. Philosophers tend to define wisdom as a product of experience, well founded knowledge to which proper judgement is applied to produce beneficial outcomes. It can be argued to be an essential component of thoughtful ethical actions as well as a key component in working through complex situations that require discernment and a balanced approach. It is concerned with long term outcomes and is not focused entirely on short-term gain. It is the virtue we employ to foster a good and just life or philosophical eudaemonia. Cultivating this skill was a concern of ancient philosophers and has become of renewed interest to some modern philosophers. There is a profound difference though, unlike our ancient collogues, we routinely think with and through machines. These days that includes LLMs which even act as conversational partners though which we can engage in something like a Socratic dialogue. In this workshop our presenters will make a position statement that addresses some of the deep philosophical questions in this topic. Are machines capable of helping us grow through wise counsel, or do they only produce simulacral glossolalia that is attractive and convenient but which we mistakenly accept as advice that is just and good? Our panelists will explore methods such as artificial wisdom, artificial phronesis, and other methods that help ensure that the AI systems that are being designed now will fare better in their interactions with human users.