California Lawmakers Approve Legislation to Ban Election-Related Deepfakes

California’s Democrat-controlled state legislature approved proposals this week that aim to regulate artificial intelligence and combat the use of deepfakes ahead of the upcoming elections.

The Details: According to The Associated Press (Lean Left bias), the legislation will “ban deepfakes related to elections and require large social media platforms to remove the deceptive material 120 days before Election Day and 60 days thereafter.” Political campaigns will also be required to publicly disclose if any of their advertising materials are altered by AI.

For Context: In the final week of its session, the California Legislature is voting on hundreds of bills to send to Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk before its Saturday deadline. Newsom will have until September 30 to sign the proposals, veto them, or allow them to become law without his signature. In July, he said he would sign a proposal to crack down on deepfakes that pertain to elections but has not commented on other legislative proposals.

How The Media Covered It: The news was first reported by AP, whose coverage was republished by several outlets across the media spectrum. Jazz Shaw of HotAir (Lean Right bias) published an opinion in which he described the deepfake law as “overly broad” and suggested California may be “sailing into some very murky legal waters.”