A YouTuber who created political satire videos of Vice President Kamala Harris using artificial intelligence is suing California officials to stop the enforcement of new state laws designed to remove “deepfake” images and videos from social media platforms.
The lawsuit on behalf of plaintiff Christopher Kohls, known as “Mr Reagan,” was filed Sept. 17 in the Eastern District of California. Kohls and his legal representative, the Washington, D.C.-based Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute (HLLI), argue in the legal complaint that the two new laws signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom violate Kohls’ First Amendment rights to engage in political speech through parody videos.
A recent Kohls video of the Democratic nominee for president lampooned her candidacy and used AI-generated narration to make Harris appear to say, “I was selected as the ultimate diversity hire … so if you criticize anything I say, you’re both sexist and racist.”
The lawsuit pushes back against Assembly Bill 2655, the Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act of 2024, and AB 2839, which aims to protect against AI-generated deceptive communications during election periods.
The debate over deepfakes accelerated after Elon Musk reposted Kohls’ Harris video on X, formerly Twitter, generating more than 100 million views, according to the lawsuit. The two new laws are unconstitutional, the complaint states.
“California flagrantly uses state power to force private social media companies to censor private citizens’ speech by purging election-related AI-generated content with AB 2655,” the lawsuit says. “And AB 2839 provides candidates or any listener a cause of action against ‘misleading’ satirical political content they dislike.”
AB 2655 contains an exception for satire or parody, but HLLI indicated that social media platforms tend to err on the side of removing content rather than risk being held liable for controversial content in the future.
HLLI senior attorney Adam Schulman said California has no right to regulate political speech, including Kohls’ videos.
“They don’t have the right to proscribe misinformation,” Schulman told the Southern California Record. “They’re trying to turn the First Amendment on its head.”
He added that an alternative to the new California laws is simply counter-speech or fact checking by opposing commentators.
But the California Attorney General’s Office’s response to the lawsuit’s call for a preliminary injunction said posts such Kohls’ can cause pre-election confusion.
“Elon Musk’s post sharing the video nowhere mentioned that it was parody or had been digitally altered,” the attorney general’s filing states. “A voter who encountered the video from Elon Musk’s post would have had no express notice that the video was supposed to be a parody – and could have concluded, as at least one expert warned viewers might, that it was real.”
In response to a query from the Record, the Attorney General’s Office said Attorney General Rob Bonta has pledged to protect the electorate from misinformation.
“Attorney General Bonta is committed to protecting the right to vote, this includes educating Californians on how artificial intelligence can spread misinformation about elections or political candidates,” the email states.
The two new laws will help to protect against the harmful use of deepfakes in ads and other content and make AI more transparent and trustworthy, according to the statement.
“Safeguarding the integrity of elections is essential to democracy, and it’s critical that we ensure AI is not deployed to undermine the public’s trust through disinformation – especially in today’s fraught political climate,” the office’s statement said.