Evaluating trust in education: a systematic review of the ethical challenges of deepfake technologies relevant to education

Abstract The emergence of deepfake technology as a result of advances in generative artificial intelligence has brought significant changes in how knowledge and authenticity are understood to the educational realm, particularly through its ability to reconstruct visual and narrative realities synthetically yet convincingly. While its pedagogical potential is recognized in the context of educational simulations, historical reconstructions, and the creation of immersive learning experiences, the presence of deepfakes has also reactivated fundamental ethical debates related to authenticity, trustworthiness, representation, and responsibility. This study aims to examine the ethical landscape of deepfake use in education through a systematic literature review of 23 international articles published between 2020 and 2025, selected using a structured transparency-and-relevance appraisal conducted independently by two reviewers. Although not all reviewed studies are situated within formal educational settings, they are included due to their transferable ethical and institutional relevance to education. The analysis reveals that there is no single dominant ethical framework that can holistically regulate this phenomenon; instead, ethical approaches are plural, ranging from deontology and utilitarianism to human rights principles, to bioethics and sustainability ethics. The findings also indicate that most institutional policies are not yet ready to address emerging dilemmas, particularly in the context of digital privacy, algorithmic bias, and ethical literacy in online classrooms. This study proposes that the future of deepfake regulation in education should be based on a contextual, deliberative, and participatory ethical approach, which focuses not only on the regulation of technology, but also on the reconstruction of epistemic responsibility in the era of synthetic reality.