Satire site The Babylon Bee has filed a lawsuit against the state of California after its governor, Gavin Newsom (D), signed laws against social media “deepfakes.”
One bill, AB 2655, or the “Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act of 2024,” requires online platforms to “block the posting of materially deceptive content related to elections in California, during specified periods before and after an election,” a description reads.
Another bill, AB 2839, or “Elections: Deceptive Media in Advertisements,” prevents people from distributing content portraying a “candidate for any federal, state, or local elected office in California” as “doing or saying something that the candidate did not do or say if the content is reasonably likely to harm the reputation or electoral prospects of a candidate.” Prohibited content under the bill includes, but is not limited to, “deepfakes.”
Those distributing satirical content online must attach a warning label to the post, a requirement that the Babylon Bee asserts defeats the purpose of satire.
According to the lawsuit, the State of California wants to be the “arbiters of political truth online.”
“So California passed AB 2839 and AB 2655 to censor speech based on their officials’ perception of truth,” the lawsuit states. “But on this, government officials don’t get the benefit of the doubt. That’s First Amendment 101. We don’t trust the government to decide what is true in our online political debates.”
Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon said on Daily Wire’s news podcast, “Morning Wire,” that putting disclaimers on parodies “completely stifles and kills the joke.”
“It disrupts our ability to do what we do the way that we do it, in the voice that we do it in. And so that’s very problematic for us,” he stated.
“If we’re unable to publish satire without putting disclaimers all over it, and we’re going to face potential penalties if we don’t do that, then that’s a very serious issue too,” Dillon told Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley. “So we’re fighting back in every way that we can against laws that clamp down on speech.”
The creator of a viral video that used AI to create a parody of Vice President Kamala Harris is also suing the state of California over the laws.
Christopher Kohls, who goes by “Mr. Reagan” on X, claims the new laws require a different font size to label the video as a “deepfake,” therefore affecting the appearance of his content. Prior to the new laws, Kohls labeled his video as a parody.
According to the lawsuit, Kohls has the “absolute Constitutional right to lampoon politicians he believes should not be elected.”
“Plaintiff knows the voiceover of Harris bragging about being a ‘diversity hire’ is false; he created it,” the suit says. “That’s the entire point of parody!”
