X and Owner Musk Sue California to Block Ban on Election Deepfakes

LOS ANGELES — Social media company X is suing in federal court to block a new California law intended to prevent deepfakes from interfering with elections.

The law that takes effect Jan. 1 requires online platforms to remove deepfakes or to label them as being fakes.

California lawmakers say they are trying to protect election integrity. X owner Elon Musk says the law interferes with online free speech.

Deepfakes are synthetic media in which images, video or audio are generated with artificial intelligence to depict real or non-existent people, objects or scenes. Deepfakes can falsely make it appear that political candidates made comments or took actions that made them look foolish.

The deepfake that prompted the California General Assembly to pass its Bill 2655 showed Vice President Kamala Harris in a campaign video making cutting remarks about diversity, President Joe Biden and illegal immigration that undercut her credibility.

It was viewed online more than 150 million times. It also led California Gov. Gavin Newsom to quarrel with Musk about whether deepfakes should be allowed to be published.

Another famous deepfake before this month’s presidential election showed singer Taylor Swift dressed like Uncle Sam endorsing Donald Trump’s run for reelection. It appeared with a message saying, “Taylor Wants You To Vote For Donald Trump.”

Swift did make an endorsement during the campaign but it was for Harris.

The X lawsuit says the greater danger in censoring deepfakes is that it could compel social media sites concerned about liability for violating the law to label or remove legitimate election content.

“This system will inevitably result in the censorship of wide swaths of valuable political speech and commentary,” says the lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. 

The lawsuit accuses the state of violating constitutional First Amendment free speech protections and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.

Section 230 provides immunity from liability to online computer platforms for the content posted by their users.

X, along with social media companies Facebook, TikTok and YouTube, have policies that prohibit posts on their website of harmful content. Normally it refers to pornography, financial scams and graphic violence.

They say they try to quickly take it down when they find it.

X warns in its lawsuit that the broad sweep of the California law puts an unreasonable burden on social media to determine whether election deepfakes are harmful or are merely meant as jest and satire.

The law’s requirements are “so vague and unintelligible that the covered platforms cannot understand what they permit and what they prohibit,” the lawsuit says.

“This, in turn, will severely chill important political speech — specifically, the use of exaggerated or unfavorable visual means to undermine and combat political opponents, which, as the Supreme Court has recognized, is ingrained in the historical fabric of U.S. political commentary and subject to the strongest of First Amendment protections,” the complaint says.

Newsom, along with the California Department of Justice, say they have no plans to back down from their support of AB 2655. The law is titled the Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act of 2024.

“Deepfakes threaten the integrity of our elections, and these new laws protect our democracy while preserving free speech — in a manner no more stringent than those in other states, including deep-red Alabama and Mississippi,” a statement from the California governor’s office said.

Musk seeks a court order blocking enforcement of the law and compensation for his legal expenses.

The case is X Corp. v. Bonta et al. in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

You can reach us at [email protected] and follow us on Facebook and Twitter