Committee weighs S.23 amendments on synthetic-media disclosures ahead of planned vote

The Government Operations & Military Affairs Committee reviewed proposed amendments to S.23, a bill that would require disclosures for deceptive or fraudulent synthetic images and videos used in elections, at a meeting Thursday afternoon, May 1, as legislative counsel summarized five changes and members asked for input from the attorney general and outside experts before a planned vote next week.

Committee members heard from Tim Devlin, legislative counsel, who said the committee had a committee amendment (draft 1.2) and that members should review both the amendment and the underlying Senate-passed text because the amendment is not a strike-all. Devlin summarized five specific edits, including changes to disclosure-size language, deletion of a sentence about disclosures when no other text appears in an image or video, expanded exceptions for news and commentary, added language covering the distribution (not just production) of satire and parody, and renaming a remedies heading to “enforcement.” Devlin read from the draft: "the disclosure shall appear in a size that's easily readable by the average viewer," and noted the committee would remove a later clause about matching the largest font size in the visual media.

The nut graf: Members focused on two core issues: how to define and…