AI deepfake panic is leading to bad laws
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There's a bill right now in congress called the NO FAKES act that claims it will protect you from deepfakes. "In this new era of AI, we need real laws to protect real people," Rep. Maria Salazar said when announcing the bill. "The NO FAKES Act is simple and sacred: you own your identity, not Big Tech, not scammers, not algorithms."
As usual, none of this is what the law actually does.
The NO FAKES act is actually an incredibly sloppy and dangerous piece of legislation that could destroy lives, eradicate privacy, and lead to sweeping censorship of journalistic and constitutionally protected speech. There's a reason that major civil liberties orgs are sounding the alarm about this proposed law.
The NO FAKES act is "something that could change the internet forever, harming speech and innovation from here on out," The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently declared.
Rather than giving people targeted tools to protect against harmful misrepresentations, the NO FAKES act just federalizes an image-licensing system, the EFF explains. The law would create an entire new infrastructure for widespread censorship with essentially zero safeguards against abuse. As the EFF notes: NO FAKES requires almost every internet gatekeeper to create a system that will:
Take down speech upon receipt of a notice.
Keep down any recurring instance—meaning, adopt inevitably overbroad replica filters on top of the already deeply flawed copyright filters.
Take down and filter tools that might have been used to make the image.
Unmask the user who uploaded the material based on nothing more than the say so of person who was allegedly “replicated.”
This bill would be a disaster for online speech and free expression. The Center for Democracy and Technology published an open letter opposing the proposed law, saying that "as written, the NO FAKES Act would threaten user privacy and risk the censorship of constitutionally-protected expression, including parody, satire, and critical commentary of elected officials."
The CDT also notes that this law could end up furthering the exploitation of adults and kids who lose power over their own likeness without appropriate safeguards to prevent abuse.
Kate Ruane is the director for the Center for Democracy and Technology's Free Expression Project. She joined this week's episode of my Free Speech Friday series to break down what the NO FAKES act really says and why we need to fight back against it.
What I’m reading
Rise of the Machines: Inside Hollywood’s AI Civil War
The technology is already transforming the industry — and could forever change the entertainment we consume. But the battle to contain it has just begun. - The Hollywood Reporter
The shocking rise of one of the tech right’s favorite posters
After he leaked Zohran Mamdani’s Columbia application data to the New York Times, critics called Jordan Lasker a “eugenicist.” A Mother Jones report shows there’s much more to his backstory. - Mother Jones
How kitsch became the defining aesthetic of right-wing America
The Department of Homeland Security is posting sickly, sentimental paintings that recall America’s ‘golden age’ alongside its cruel anti-immigrant memes – history has shown how this leads us down a dark path. - DAZED
These Restaurants, Salons and Workouts Are Free for Hot People—if They Post About Them
While regular-looking people fiercely compete for tables on Resy and OpenTable, models and influencers say they can easily book entire days of meals and experiences on a different app. - WSJ
Jeffrey Epstein’s Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album.
One Was From Donald Trump. The leather-bound book was compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell. The president says the letter ‘is a fake thing.’ - WSJ
As Annie from Depths of Wikipedia pointed out, a lady in Ohio solicited doodles from celebrities to auction for charity and in 2004 she said that Trump was always literally the first to send in his drawings.