A new bill signed by California Governor Gavin Newsom that would regulate AI-generated “deepfake” election content and require social media to remove “deceptive content” is currently being challenged in court.
According to the governor's office, the new law builds on laws passed several years ago regulating election advertising and communications.
However, two of the three new laws are being challenged in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California by conservative poster @MrReaganUSA, according to information obtained by Fox News Digital. The account posted an AI-generated parody of a Harris campaign ad, which drew renewed attention and discussion after Newsom signed the bill.
“This is a chilling force for free speech, especially for political commentators like Mr. Reagan who use satire to criticize public figures and make a living off their social media audiences,” the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, a public benefit corporation that filed the lawsuit on behalf of @MrReaganUSA, said in a news release.
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California Governor Gavin Newsom (Andrew Harnick/Getty Images)
According to Newsom's office, the bills would not ban memes or parodies, but would require all satirical or parodic content to either be removed or to carry a disclaimer label saying the content has been digitally altered. One of the bills also exempts “materially deceptive content that constitutes satire or parody.”
But Theodore Frank, a lawyer for the account owners suing California, told Fox News Digital in an interview that one of the laws includes a provision that would require social media platforms to “have a massive censorship apparatus and respond to complaints within 36 hours.”
“And social media will just ban us so they don't have to have a massive infrastructure to deal with it. They're not going to look into whether something qualifies as parody or not,” Frank said.
“There are provisions that allow for lawsuits to be filed against the producers of the video unless there are extremely burdensome disclosure requirements that basically require a full screen disclosure, causing the producers to delete years' worth of video, spend hours re-editing it to meet the disclosure requirements, and then make a disclosure that is bigger than the video itself, which ends up ruining the entire comedy event,” Frank added.
The law makes it illegal to create and publish deepfakes before and 60 days after Election Day, and also allows courts to block the distribution of the material and impose civil penalties, according to the Associated Press.
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A conservative account called X, which posted an AI-generated parody of a Kamala Harris campaign ad, is at the center of a lawsuit challenging California's new law regulating AI “deepfakes” on social media. (Jemal Countess/Getty Images)
X allows parody accounts as long as they “clearly state that they are parody accounts in the account name and profile,” according to the company's website. The platform has no rules about individual posts containing parody, and has been known to label them as deepfakes if posters fail to do so.
Alabama already has a similar law on the books, and Frank said he's open to suing over it as well.
“I don't think Republicans are immune to over-legislating in this area, but there are certainly other states that are doing the same thing. And I think it depends on who's in power and who's being mocked,” he said.
In a statement provided to Fox News Digital, Governor Newsom's spokesperson Izzy Gurdon said: ““The person who created this misleading deepfake in the middle of the election had already labeled the post as a parody on X. Requiring that the word 'parody' be used in the actual video will help us avoid further misleading the public when the video is shared across platforms.”
“It's unclear why this conservative activist is suing California, but this new law disclosing election misinformation is less onerous than laws already passed in other states, including Alabama,” Gurdon said. “I'm proud that California has expanded its law to cover misinformation about election workers for two months after the election, to ensure bad actors do not try to disrupt our democratic process.”
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California Governor Gavin Newsom has previously condemned such satirical election content generated by AI. (AP Photo/Stephen Sene)
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Newsom has previously denounced such satirical election content generated by AI, responding to an altered Harris election ad reposted by Elon Musk: Newsom said in July.“It should be illegal to manipulate voices in these 'ads,' and I will be signing legislation in the coming weeks to make sure it is illegal.”
Fox Business' Michael Dorgan contributed to this report.
