According to Bloomberg, Elon Musk's social media company X has filed a lawsuit seeking to block California law AB 2655, which requires large online platforms to remove and label election-related AI deepfakes.
X claims that the law, also known as the “Protecting Democracies from Deepfake Fraud Act of 2024,'' will lead to widespread censorship of political speech. The complaint, filed late Thursday in Sacramento federal court, states that “there is a long history of the First Amendment's strongest protections against speech critical of government officials or candidates for public office, and that includes It also includes tolerance for potentially false speech made in the context of .
AB 2655 is onerous, including establishing a channel to report political deepfakes and a mechanism by which candidates and elected officials can seek injunctive relief if platforms fail to comply with the law. It imposes other requirements on platforms that it considers.
The lawsuit comes weeks after a federal judge temporarily blocked a California deepfake law that bans deceptive campaign ads online.