A federal judge struck a second California anti-deepfake law Friday, finding it violates free speech protections.
The law, AB 2389, allows for lawsuits against social media users who share AI-generated, “materially deceptive,” content related to electoral campaigns. It carves out satirists by allowing them to post deepfakes—content that often imitates public figures—that are labeled as such.
The law isn’t the least restrictive way to achieve California’s compelling interest of ensuring election integrity, Judge John A. Mendez said. And it both censors and compels speech, he wrote in a Friday order, granting summary judgment to the content creators who ...