Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a series of AI-centric bills to protect Hollywood actors from having their likenesses co-opted, and prevent voters from being deceived by so-called “deepfake” videos, such as the altered Kamala Harris campaign ad that Elon Musk shared. Misinformation is at the forefront of voters’ minds during this election season, and the new laws are some of the nation’s most far-reaching.
One of the new laws enables courts to obtain an injunction that forces people to take down misleading, artificially manipulated content that they posted, explains Jeremy B. White, senior politics and policy reporter at Politico. However, he notes that if you add a disclaimer that the post has been distorted or is satirical, then that’s legal.
Still, people in the tech industry have First Amendment concerns about this legislation, and White suggests he expects that it’ll face legal challenges. Courts will have to determine what is protected speech and what crosses a line.
“Once you get into what is satire and what is something else, it's going to be very complicated, and I don't know that we're going to have a real clear answer before the November election. … I think this is going to be in limbo for a little while.”
Two other bills Newsom signed protect performers from unauthorized use of digital likenesses. One creates tighter rules on what can and can't be done, and the other gives families more say in the artificially-generated version of a deceased performer.
White notes that on Tuesday, Gov. Newsom also signed SB 1047, which requires safety testing for the largest AI models, “ensuring that they won't unleash catastrophic harms like bio attacks.”
Would these laws have happened without Hollywood actors and writers striking last year, largely over AI concerns?
“There's no doubt that organized labor, whether it's SAG-AFTRA around this type of thing, Teamsters worrying about autonomous vehicles, you have just seen a ton of union activism around technology and artificial intelligence and what that means for work. And that has absolutely been a major part of the politics in Sacramento,” says White.
