Social media platform X, owned by Elon Musk, has launched legal action against California’s law targeting “deepfakes.”
The law, AB 2655, 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.
Large online platforms must also “label certain additional content inauthentic, fake, or false during specified periods before and after an election in California.”
According to the complaint, the law mandates a “reporting mechanism to facilitate the removal and alteration of — certain content about candidates for elective office, elections officials, and elected officials, of which the State of California disapproves and deems to be ‘materially deceptive.’” This requirement “has the effect of impermissibly replacing the judgments of covered platforms about what content belongs on their platforms with the judgments of the State. And it imposes liability on the covered platforms to the extent that their judgments about content moderation are inconsistent with those imposed by the State.”
“This system will inevitably result in the censorship of wide swaths of valuable political speech and commentary and will limit the type of ‘uninhibited, robust, and wide-open’ ‘debate on public issues’ that core First Amendment protections are designed to ensure,” the complaint adds.
The document asserts that the law violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
The law is set to take effect in January.
Another California law targeting AI-generated “deepfake” content was blocked in October.
A judge blocked AB 2839 after Christopher Kohls, known as “Mr. Reagan” on X, argued that his parody video of Vice President Kamala Harris was protected under the First Amendment.
“The Court acknowledges that the risks posed by artificial intelligence and deepfakes are significant, especially as civic engagement migrates online and disinformation proliferates on social media,” the judge wrote. “Against this backdrop, the Court does not enjoin the state statute at issue in this motion lightly, even on a preliminary basis.”
According to the judge, the law “acts as a hammer instead of a scalpel, serving as a blunt tool that hinders humorous expression and unconstitutionally stifles the free and unfettered exchange of ideas which is so vital to American democratic debate.”
Satire site The Babylon Bee also sued California over AB 2839. California officials later agreed they could not enforce the law.
