Newsom’s deepfake election laws are already being challenged in federal court

Fox News’ Eben Brown reports that as election season ramps up, scammers are producing deepfakes that are so sophisticated, they’re almost impossible to detect. 
New legislation signed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom regulating AI-generated “deepfake” election content and requiring the removal of “deceptive content” from social media is now being challenged in court.
The new laws build on legislation passed years earlier regulating campaign ads and communications, according to the governor’s office.
But two of the three new laws are being challenged in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California by a conservative poster – @MrReaganUSA – Fox News Digital has learned. The account had posted an AI-generated parody of a Harris campaign ad that resurfaced and went viral after Newsom signed the bills. 
“This chills free speech, particularly for political commentators like Mr. Reagan, who use satire to critique public figures and rely on social media viewership for their livelihood,” said the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, the public interest firm filing the lawsuit on behalf of @MrReaganUSA, in a news release.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The legislation, which Newsom’s office says will not ban memes or parodies, will instead require all satire or parody content to either remove their content or display a disclaimer label that the content is digitally altered. One of the laws also exempts “Materially deceptive content that constitutes satire or parody.”
But the attorney for the account holder suing California, Theodore Frank, told Fox News Digital in an interview that there’s a provision in one of the laws that would require social media platforms to have “a large censorship apparatus and respond to complaints within 36 hours.”
“And what’s going to happen is that social media is just going to ban us so that they don’t have to have a big infrastructure to deal with it. They’re not going to look to see whether something counts as parody,” Frank said.
“There’s a provision that allows lawsuits against the makers of the videos, if, unless there are these really burdensome disclosure requirements that basically require you to use the entire screen to have the disclosure and requires them to take down years of videos and spend hours on hours re-cutting them with the disclosure requirements and then having a disclosure that’s louder than the video itself, and that takes away the entire comedic event,” Frank added.
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.
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A conservative X account that posted an AI-generated parody of a Kamala Harris campaign ad is at the center of a lawsuit challenging new California laws restricting AI “deepfakes” on social media. (Jemal Countess/Getty Images)
X allows parody accounts so long as they distinguish themselves as such “in their account name and in their bio,” per the company’s website. The platform does not have rules around individual posts containing parody and has been known to label deepfakes if the poster does not do so.
There are similar laws already in place in Alabama, and Frank said they’re prepared to file suit against those, too.
“I don’t think Republicans are immune to over-legislating in this area, but there are certainly other states that are doing this. And you know, I think it depends on who’s in power and who’s getting made fun of,” he said.
In a statement provided to Fox News Digital, Newsom spokesperson Izzy Gardon said, “The person who created this misleading deepfake in the middle of an election already labeled the post as a parody on X. Requiring them to use the word ‘parody’ on the actual video avoids further misleading the public as the video is shared across the platform.”
“It’s unclear why this conservative activist is suing California. This new disclosure law for election misinformation isn’t any more onerous than laws already passed in other states, including Alabama,” Gardon said. “We’re proud California did expand the law to also include misinformation about election workers for two months after an election — so that malicious actors don’t attempt to disrupt the democratic process.”
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom has previously condemned such satirical election content generated by AI. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
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Newsom has previously condemned such satirical election content generated by AI. In response to the altered election ad of Harris, which Elon Musk reposted, Newsom said in July. “Manipulating a voice in an ‘ad’ like this one should be illegal. I’ll be signing a bill in a matter of weeks to make sure it is.”
Fox Business’s Michael Dorgan contributed to this report.
Jamie Joseph is a writer who covers politics. She leads Fox News Digital coverage of the Senate.