Gov. Gavin Newsom should have known this would happen. After he signed three new laws regulating political ads and parodies produced by artificial intelligence, the Babylon Bee parody site produced one flouting the law and mocking him. It uses what’s called a “deepfake” of his voice praising such “achievements” as people leaving the state and the homeless crisis.
“On my watch, the cost of living and homelessness have skyrocketed,” you can hear in Newsom’s voice. “Schools are failing.” And so on.
Game on.
Proponents of such laws believe voters aren’t smart enough to engage with such content and must be protected from unfair speech by the government. But such mockery goes back to the earliest days of the republic, when partisans of President John Adams and challenger Thomas Jefferson threw mud at the opposition with abandon. Jefferson was attacked by the president of Yale, for example, on the grounds that if he won, “we would see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution.”
Unfair? Sure. Misleading? Sure. But this is America, where freedom of speech is constitutionally protected. In time, the best ideas eventually prevail.
Two of the bills signed by Newsom are clear attacks on freedom of speech and expression.
Assembly Bill 2839 is by Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, D-Santa Cruz. It would ban ads containing “certain materially deceptive content … with malice.” The target of a hit piece could file a lawsuit to stop distribution and “seek damages.”
Assembly Bill 2655 is by Assemblyman Marc Berman, D-Menlo Park. It would require tech platforms to label content “inauthentic, fake, or false.” It would exempt “satire or parody,” TV stations, newspapers and magazines from the bill if they “satisfy specified requirements,” as determined by the government. Candidates, elected officials, election officers, local district attorneys and the state attorney general could “seek injunctive relief” for “noncompliance.”
On AB 2655, the Computer & Communications Industry Association led a coalition of tech firms objecting to the bill. Their letter to the Senate charged that the bill presumed AI platforms “are an appropriate arbiter of deciding what constitutes accurate election information,” when they are not.
All these bills violate the First Amendment right of the people against “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” As we noted in a July 31 editorial, in the 1988 decision Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8-0, “The First Amendment protects parodies of celebrities or other public figures, even if they are aimed to cause distress to their targets.”
After signing the above bills, Newsom explained, “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.” He said the bills would “foster transparent and trustworthy AI” development in California.
Actually, this controlling attitude will drive AI development to other states and countries. Elon Musk, whose X platform includes Grok AI, left for Texas and recently posted, “Hard to be a free speech platform in a state that wants to ban free speech.” Fair point.
Democracy thrives through freedom of speech, including deep fakes and other parodies. These and other AI bills the governor may sign almost certainly will be rejected in the courts. Let a thousand political jokes bloom.