Political deepfakes fall under caricature laws and are explicitly protected under free speech.
Discussion
I do think they should be clearly marked, tho, as it is getting difficult to discern the difference.
I'm thinking less about laws as such and more about what is morally right or wrong. Perhaps it should be legal to do political deepfakes, but does that qualify morally as lying? Maybe. It's certainly different when the deepfake is not obvious, unlike a political cartoon, impression, or funny video/audio edit.
Germany has a strong culture of political impersonation cabaret, so we see this a digital version. It just has to be identifiable as a fake.
It's acting, not lying.
Well, I suppose you could argue that acting is always lying.
In acting, the audience knows that they're seeing an actor, not the real person. That's the difference.
Deepfakes present themselves as the real person, in some cases.
That's why they have to be identifiable, by law.
Otherwise, the acting can be too convincing.
Like having a lifelike puppet.