Every engagement starts the same way: with the right questions, asked by the right people.
Synthetic Crisis
Field guide · Deepfakes and information attacks
Synthetic Crisis
When evidence can be fabricated, speed without verification becomes risk.
Thirty-one pages for communications, legal, security and executive teams facing fabricated audio or video, impersonation of named people, or a coordinated information attack — where the fastest possible response is usually the wrong one.
Preserve first, then verify, then decide. A synthetic crisis is an evidence problem before it is a communications problem, and correcting it badly can spread the fabrication further than leaving it alone.
Get the field guideWhat it is — and is not
A preservation protocol
Capturing the evidence before it changes, spreads or disappears — the step most teams skip.
A verification discipline
Provenance and technical checks, with an honest account of what each can and cannot establish.
A containment map
Platform routes, legal routes, and what each can realistically achieve within what timeframe.
Not a detection tool
It does not claim to identify synthetic media, and it warns against public speculation about authenticity.
What is inside
Premise + scope
What this guide covers, and what it does not.
Definitions
Separating the artifact from the behaviour around it.
Threat map
Fake content, real content and the space between them.
Preserve
Capturing the evidence before it changes or disappears.
Verify
Provenance, technical checks and their honest limits.
Assess
Reach, harm, credibility and who is actually affected.
Contain
Platform routes, legal routes and what each can do.
Communicate
Correcting without amplifying the fabrication.
Impersonation
When the target is a named person, not the organization.
Recover
Restoring the record and the people harmed by it.
Working tools
Preservation log, verification sheet and response templates.
Research basis
What is established, what is adapted, what is Artefact91 IP.
Templates built to be used in the room
Preservation log
What was captured, when, by whom, and in what state.
Verification sheet
Provenance, technical signals, confidence and what remains unknown.
Response decision sheet
Correct, contain, escalate or hold — and the reasoning behind it.
The templates are compact by design. Copy them into your own workspace and pre-fill everything that can be known in advance.
What it is built on
The operating model is Artefact91's. The verification, security and crisis disciplines underneath it are established. External frameworks are cited to show the practices the system integrates, not to imply endorsement or equivalence.
- NIST (2024) — Cybersecurity Framework 2.0
- UK Government Communication Service — RESIST 3
- ISO 22361:2022 — Crisis management guidelines
- CISA — incident response and communications planning
- C2PA — Content Provenance and Authenticity specification
- EU Code of Practice on Disinformation
- Artefact91 (2026) — The Artefact91 System
The guide pairs with the Crisis & Issues Field Guide for the wider decision and communications protocol. Or bring us the situation you are facing.
