States Are Rushing to Regulate Deepfakes as AI Goes Mainstream
Images of former President Donald Trump hugging and kissing Dr. Anthony Fauci, his ex-chief medical adviser. Pornographic depictions of Hollywood actresses and internet influencers. A photo of an explosion at the Pentagon.
All were found to be “deepfakes,” highly realistic audio and visual content created with rapidly advancing artificial intelligence technology.
Those harmed by the digital forgeries—especially women featured in sexually explicit deepfakes without consent—have few options for legal recourse, and lawmakers across the country are now scrambling to fill that gap.
“An honestly presented pornographic deepfake was not necessarily a violation of any existing law,” said Matthew Kugler, a law professor at Northwestern University who supported an anti-deepfake bill in Illinois that's currently pending before the governor.
“You are taking something that is public, your face, and something that is from another person entirely, so under many current statutes and torts, there wasn't an obvious way to sue people for that,” he said.
The recent interest in the powers of generative AI has already spurred multiple congressional hearings and proposals this year to regulate the burgeoning technology. But with the federal government deadlocked, state legislatures have been quicker to advance laws that aim to tackle the immediate harms of AI.
Nine states have enacted laws that regulate deepfakes, mostly in the context of pornography and elections influence, and at least four other states have bills at various stages of the legislative process.
California, Texas, and Virginia were the first states to enact deepfake legislation back in 2019, before the current frenzy over AI. Minnesota most recently enacted a deepfake law in May, and a
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