
By Ashley Belanger
Upholding the First Amendment, a senior US district judge has blocked California’s deepfakes law, AB 2839, which was designed to stop deceptive AI-generated content from impacting election outcomes.
[ . . . ]A First Amendment scholar and senior fellow with the non-partisan think tank The Future of Free Speech, Jeff Kosseff praised the ruling as setting important precedent regarding AI-generated content online.
“The California law is a clear violation of the First Amendment, so it is not surprising that Judge Mendez quickly blocked it,” Kosseff said. “The opinion is a well-reasoned application of First Amendment law and recognizes that government regulation is not an appropriate solution to any challenges that might arise from deepfakes. As lawmakers across the country consider legislation to crack down on political falsehoods, Judge Mendez’s opinion serves as a reminder that such efforts often face insurmountable hurdles, and for good reason.”
[ . . . ]Kosseff told Ars that there could be more narrow ways that government officials looking to protect election integrity could regulate deepfakes online. The Supreme Court has suggested that deepfakes spreading disinformation on the mechanics of voting could possibly be regulated, Kosseff said.
Mendez got it “exactly right” by concluding that the best remedy for election-related deepfakes is more speech, Kosseff said. As Mendez described it, a vague law like AB 2839 seemed to only “uphold the State’s attempt to suffocate” speech.
[ . . . ]Mendez agreed with Kohls that the text disclosure requirement “is not reasonable because it almost certainly ‘drowns out’ the message a parody or satire video is trying to convey,” while the audio disclosure may be considered “compelled speech” but would not necessarily be “unduly burdensome.” Kosseff suggested both requirements risked compelling speech that altered the satirical content.
“The court has long held that the First Amendment protects not only against restrictions on speech but against compelled speech,” Kosseff told Ars. “That sort of compelled speech really does change the character of something like parody.”
Read MoreJeff Kosseff is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow for The Future of Free Speech. He writes about online speech, the First Amendment, and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.