California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the country’s toughest law banning digitally altered political “deepfakes” on Tuesday, following through on a vow to act after rebuking Elon Musk for sharing a doctored video of Vice President Kamala Harris.
The new California law — which will take effect before the November election — channels rising alarm about artificial intelligence’s capacity to disrupt elections by sowing misinformation, with voters increasingly confronted with deepfake images and audio impersonating candidates. Musk, who owns X, stoked that debate when he shared the AI-altered video of Harris in July, drawing Newsom’s public promise to prohibit similar practices.
I have strong concerns that this law is unconstitutional under the First Amendment. (In my book Cheap Speech, I talk about laws that require labeling of deepfakes that I do believe are consistent with the First Amendment, but this law does not follow my suggested model and requires government officials to decide what “parody” or “satire” is.)