Public Citizen presents state-level model bills on deepfakes, intimate-image abuse and bot disclosure

Alana Belair, organizing manager for the Democracy team at Public Citizen, told the Alaska Senate State Affairs Committee on Thursday that many states have adopted similar bills to regulate deepfakes in elections, to criminalize nonconsensual intimate deepfakes, and to require disclosure when consumers interact with chatbots.

Belair defined a deepfake as “content that is fabricated using technology” that depicts “someone doing or saying something that they never actually did or said in real life,” and she said the rapid improvement and accessibility of the tools is driving legislative urgency.

The nut of Belair’s presentation was threefold: election deepfakes, nonconsensual intimate-image deepfakes, and bot-disclosure laws. For election deepfakes, she said 21 states had enacted laws to regulate deepfakes in election communications by the end of 2024 and that nearly every state has considered such measures. For intimate-image deepfakes, Belair said 30 states have passed legislation…