Last week, California’s legislature passed a bill banning deepfakes, citing concerns over how AI tools are increasingly being used to trick voters, among other crimes. I say, good luck with that!

Deepfakes are just one part of the political misinformation campaigns carried out by some of our most trusted platforms over the last few years.

Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook had suppressed news during the pandemic at the behest of the White House. Elon Musk, when he took over X, released a trove of documents showing that the former leaders of his company had done the same. And the Russians, Chinese and Iranians are all accused of manipulating social media with bots delivering misinformation in order to dupe American voters.

In case you've been hiding under a rock these past few years, a "deepfake" is, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, "a video, photo, or audio recording that seems real but has been manipulated" using artificial intelligence technology, and can “depict someone appearing to say or do something that they in fact never said or did."

My firm implements software and technology that relies on AI. I frequently discuss the risks inherent in AI with my clients. One of the major risks is the misinformation caused by these deepfakes. And it’s a serious problem.

The........

© The Hill