(C) Florida Phoenix This story was originally published by Florida Phoenix and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Controls over artificial intelligence in political ads is heading to governor's desk • Florida Phoenix [1] ['Michael Moline', 'More From Author', '- March'] Date: 2024-03-01 Legislation seeking to control the use of artificial intelligence to slander opponents in political campaigns is headed to Gov. Ron DeSantis following its final passage in the Florida Senate on Friday. The bill (HB 919) requires disclosure within any campaign material if a candidate or political committee uses AI “with intent to injure a candidate or to deceive regarding a ballot issue,” and sets minimum requirements for the size of these disclosures. “You don’t have to go too far to see, you know, the technology of artificial intelligence and what that can do, especially how that can impact our elections. How that can depict somebody doing something, saying something, being somewhere where in reality they’re not,” said bill sponsor Nick DiCeglie, a Republican from Pinellas County. “Our constituents, the state of Florida, they need to know when artificial intelligence is being used in a political advertisement to injure somebody,” DeCiglie said. The Senate passed the measure unanimously. The state House passed the bill on Wednesday. The measure defines “generative artificial intelligence” as “a machine-based system that can, for a given set of human-defined objectives, emulate the structure and characteristics of input data in order to generate derived synthetic content including images, videos, audio, text, and other digital content.” It prescribes that “if the generated content appears to depict a real person performing an action that did not actually occur, and if the generated content was created with intent to injure a candidate or to deceive regarding a ballot issue, the political advertisement, electioneering communication, or other miscellaneous advertisement must prominently state the following disclaimer: ‘Created in whole or in part with the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI).’” Enforcement The bill provides for enforcement through the Florida Election Commission or criminal charges that could bring up to one year in jail and $1,000 in fines. Democrat Jason Pizzo, representing parts of Broward and Miami-Dade counties, complained that law enforcement is typical loth to charge election crimes during campaigns for fear of influencing the outcomes. “The wrongdoers, the bad actors, bank on the idea and rely upon the idea that nothing will ever get done within the election cycle. I think that culture needs to change,” Pizzo said. “If you’re sending out mailers with me saying I’m in the mafia because I’m Italian and have a couple of bucks, I think I should be able to stop it immediately. If you’re posting where my kids go to school and my home address, I think I should be able to stop it immediately. “If you’re making stuff up about people, I think you should be able to stop it immediately,” he said. “If wrongdoing is being done, then you get to suffer the consequences while its being done so the electorate knows who it’s dealing with.” As the Phoenix reported in December, Never Back Down, the federal super PAC backing Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign, used former President Donald Trump’s own words against him last summer in an ad accusing Trump of attacking Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds. The ad never mentioned that it used artificial intelligence. In April, the Republican National Committee did include a disclaimer in an AI-generated video targeting President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. [END] --- [1] Url: https://floridaphoenix.com/2024/03/01/controls-over-artificial-intelligence-in-political-ads-is-heading-to-governors-desk/ Published and (C) by Florida Phoenix Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/floridaphoenix/