California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law that makes it illegal to “knowingly distribute an ad or other election communications that contain materially deceptive content–including deepfakes.”
California Assembly Bill 2655 is called the “Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act of 2024.” It “prohibits any person, committee, or other entity from distributing, with actual malice, materially deceptive audio or visual media of a candidate for elective office with the intent to injure the candidate’s reputation or to deceive a voter into voting for or against the candidate, within 60 days of the election.”
If a politician finds this misleading content about themselves, they can seek “injunctive relief” against the platform that hosts it. Meaning, the candidate can sue X or YouTube or wherever they find that content.
So when Kamala Harris posts something like this about “Trump Abortion Bans,” is that okay? Donald Trump never instated any abortion bans and he supports abortion in the case of rape and incest. He said so himself. This post is a lie. Can Trump sue her?
Or when the Harris campaign manipulated news headlines for campaign ads? That was “deceptive visual media.” Will she be punished for that?
The governor doesn’t seem focused on that. He is focused on Elon Musk’s parodies of Kamala Harris.
