Report from Reuters
In Brief – X has filed a lawsuit in federal court to block enforcement of a Minnesota state law that bans people from using AI-generated “deepfakes” to influence an election and threatens those who disseminate such content with fines and jail terms. The social media platform argues that the 2024 law violates the First Amendment rights of social media platforms to determine the content circulated on their sites, empowers government officials to censor political speech, is overly vague in its reach, and is precluded by Section 230, the federal law that protects digital platforms from being held liable for content posted by users. A similar motion filed last year by a Republican state lawmaker and conservative social media influencer was turned down by US District Judge Laura Provinzino who ruled the plaintiffs lacked standing.
Context – Election interference and non-consensual pornography are the most cited harms from AI-related technology tools that can create so-called deepfakes. Although the biggest AI developers have agreed to identify and label AI-generated images created by their services, “watermarking” is considered of limited value by many experts because it can be circumvented and there are AI tools that don’t use the technology. More than 20 states have legislated in some way to prohibit election deepfakes, but none have been enforced, and California’s 2024 election deepfake law was quickly blocked by a federal judge after its enactment. The US Senate recently passed legislation on non-consensual pornography, including through deepfakes, with strong bipartisan backing.