ATLANTA — Georgia lawmakers took the first step Thursday to ban deepfake or artificially generated campaign ads at least 90 days out from an election.
The House voted to pass the deepfake AI bill.
Channel 2′s Richard Elliot has learned that some Republicans are accusing other Republicans of waging a disinformation campaign against that bill.
The bill was written by Republicans. It had bipartisan support. But those Republicans accused the state Freedom Caucus of spreading disinformation in an attempt to kill the bill.
Forsyth County Republican Todd Jones is angry members of his own party tried to torpedo the bill that would ban deepfake or AI-generated campaign ads and he accused them of spreading lies do to it.
“It’s almost ironic, right?” Jones told Elliot. “A disinformation campaign against deepfakes. You cannot make this stuff up.”
Jones and Holly Springs Republican Brad Thomas are trying to stop campaign ads that include fake AI-generated images.
Thomas said he wrote the bill to preserve First Amendment rights at parody and criticism.
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It would only go into effect 90 days out of an election and target only those people working for campaigns or political action committees.
“This bill doesn’t affect every person. It’s tightly prescribed campaigns, committees, and political action committees. That’s the people we’re going after because we believe they have the money to actually generate some of these that might be believable,” Thomas said.
But Woodstock Republican Charlice Byrd and the state Freedom Caucus pushed back claiming the bill would hurt people’s rights to political speech.
“This bill is an affront to our First Amendment rights,” Byrd said on the House floor Thursday. “This bill aims to criminalize the creation and distribution of what they call deceptive digital content in the runup to an election.”
But Jones said their accusations were nothing more than an attempt to muddy the waters before the House vote.
“There’s a particular part of our population that isn’t interested in the truth, not interested in creating great policy. All they’re interested in doing is scaring people,” Jones said.
Elliot attempted to contact Byrd for comment on this story but hasn’t heard back yet.
This bill passed 148 to 22. It now heads to the Senate.
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