California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a strict new censorship law Tuesday that will make it illegal to produce or distribute AI political videos around election season. Tell me that this doesn’t sound like it infringes on the First Amendment:
The new law, the strictest in the country, takes effect immediately and aims to crack down on deceptive content which uses artificial intelligence to create false images or videos.
The law makes it illegal to create and publish deepfakes ahead of Election Day and 60 days thereafter. It also allows courts to stop distribution of the materials and impose civil penalties, per The Associated Press.
The blowback was immediate. Former Republican State Senator Melissa Melendez (R) predicted this law will have a short shelf life:
A free speech group called The Fire argued that this is not the way to attack the problems posed by AI:
In targeting “deceptive” political content, California’s new law threatens satire, parody, and other First Amendment-protected speech.
A.B. 2839 bans sharing “deceptive” digitally modified content about candidates for office for any purpose. That means sharing such content even to criticize it or point out it’s fake could violate the law.
The law also requires satire and parody to be labeled, like requiring a comedian to preface every joke with an announcement he’s making a joke.
That’s not funny — it’s scary. Whatever concerns exist about AI-generated expression, violating the First Amendment isn’t the way to address them.
Newsom was triggered by a (hysterical) Kamala Harris campaign ad that Musk retweeted without telling everyone a fact that was completely obvious to any sentient being—it was a fake. I wrote about the “commercial” when it came out in July:
But Gavin grew cranky and failed to appreciate the humor. In fact, he said that the measure was in direct response to Musk’s post:
But what perhaps the elegantly coiffed governor failed to take into consideration was that Musk is kind of like a hornet’s nest: poke him, and he’ll come back at you like a swarm. He masterfully mocked the failed guv with several tweets, including one Tuesday where he retweeted the original fake Kamala ad (which currently has 55 million views) that so upset Gov. Grumpy:
He wasn’t done, though; remember that I said that it was like poking a hornet’s nest; you’ll probably get bitten more than once. On Wednesday, the X owner fired off another fake video, this one produced by the parody site The Babylon Bee. (Note to Mr. Newsom: the Bee openly says they are a parody site. I’m sure if they run afoul of this ridiculous new law, their lawyers will make that very clear.)
