'More realistic than ever': Florida looks to regulate use of AI in political campaign ads

A Florida Senate committee approved a new bill that regulates the use of artificial intelligence in political campaign advertisements, requiring disclaimers in any media that benefits from the use of machine learning.

The Senate Committee on Ethics and Elections recently approved a series of bills, including finance bills and a bill that limits county commissioners' term length, Daily Fetched reported.

Senate Bill 850 was also passed, titled "Use of Artificial Intelligence in Political Advertising."

The bill defined the term "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, video, audio, text, and other digital content."

As such, the bill still stated that any "political advertisement, electioneering communication, or other miscellaneous advertisement of a political nature" cannot use any images, video, audio, text, or "other digital content" that was created entirely or partially with the help of AI without a disclaimer.

The bill added that any political ad that uses AI will be required to display the following statement, displayed prominently:

"Created in whole or in part with the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI)."

The use of AI without the disclaimer is subject to typical criminal penalties relating to election advertising laws and/or complaints regarding violations with the Florida Elections Commission.

Republican state Senator Nick DiCeglie, the bill's sponsor, said the "increasing access to sophisticated AI-generated content threatens the integrity of elections by facilitating the dissemination of misleading or completely fabricated information that appears more realistic than ever."

"The technology that produces this content has advanced rapidly and outpaced government regulation," DiCeglie added, according to Just the News.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was accused of using three AI-generated images in an attack ad on Donald Trump in June 2023.

As Reuters reported, images in the ad of Trump hugging and kissing Dr. Anthony Fauci were created with AI. The video did not disclose any use of AI, which would be required of DeSantis' team under the new law.

The ad was also hit with a community note on X that disputed the claim that Trump could have fired Fauci.

The new rule is set to go into effect on July 1, 2024.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!