Members of the House Elections Committee on Monday voted in favor of advancing a slate of bipartisan bills that would regulate the use of deepfakes in political ads.
Last week, House Elections Committee Chair Penelope Tsernoglou (D-East Lansing) and state Reps. Ranjeev Puri (D-Canton), Matthew Bierlein (R-Vassar) and Noah Arbit (D-West Bloomfield) introduced House Bills 5141–5145. The bills would require disclaimers on political ads with audio, images or videos generated using artificial intelligence and create penalties for trying to deceive voters close to an election by using deepfake technology.
Ahead of the committee meeting, Voters Not Politicians, a nonpartisan organization advocating for government transparency and election reform, created an ad parodying deep fake political ads. In the video, former Michigan governors are shown making statements that oppose their views while in office and cheering on Ohio State football.
According to a statement from the organization, the ad is intended to demonstrate the danger of the unregulated use of AI in politics by mimicking misleading political ads posted without a disclaimer.
“Our goal in releasing this ad is really to shock lawmakers and the public with the reality of what this technology is already capable of doing,” Kim Murphy-Kovalick, Voters Not Politicians programs director, said in the statement.
This story was originally published by Michigan Advance. Read more here: https://michiganadvance.com/2023/10/17/lawmakers-push-forward-on-package-addressing-deepfakes-in-political-ads/