California’s far-left governor celebrated Constitution Day with a series of new laws to “crack down” on free speech articulated via artificially generated content.
On Tuesday, Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom officially outlawed the creation and distribution of images or videos created with artificial intelligence known as “deepfakes.” The meme ban applies 120 days before an election and 60 days after. The law formerly known as Assembly Bill 2839 allows people depicted in AI-generated memes and videos to obtain a preliminary injunction in court that stops the meme’s distribution.
“Safeguarding the integrity of elections is essential to democracy, and it’s critical that we ensure AI is not deployed to undermine the public’s trust through disinformation – especially in today’s fraught political climate,” Newsom said in a press release. “These measures will help to combat the harmful use of deepfakes in political ads and other content, one of several areas in which the state is being proactive to foster transparent and trustworthy AI.”
Newsom also signed two other pieces of legislation requiring campaigns and social media platforms to disclose whether their content was created with artificial intelligence. Tech CEO Elon Musk, who announced in July he would relocate the headquarters for two of his companies from California to Texas, amplified a fake campaign ad that Newsom characterized as the impetus for the decision to sign the anti-speech laws.
“Hard to be a free speech platform in a state that wants to ban free speech,” Musk wrote in another post on X.
