By Guy Page

Unflattering, ‘deceptive’ photoshopped or AI-generated political ads and images will have to carry warning labels, if a senate bill introduced this week is passed into law.

Other Senate bills introduced including prohibiting firearms discharge within 500 feet of a school or childcare facility, cell-phone free schools, exempting military retirement pay from income tax, and expanding Dr. Dynasaur to age 26. See complete list of Senate bills below.

S.23 requires disclosure of what it calls ‘synthetic media’ 90 days before an election.

The seven sponsors of S.23 include Republicans, Democrats, and Progressives, and four of the five members of Senate Gov Ops. The seven sponsors are: Sen. Ruth Hardy, Sen. Alison Clarkson, Sen. Brian Collamore, Sen. Robert Norris, Sen. Tanya Vyhovsky, Sen. Anne Watson and Sen. Rebecca White.

“Deceptive and fraudulent synthetic media” means synthetic media that creates a representation of an individual or individuals with the intent to injure the reputation of a candidate, to influence the outcome of an election….” including “an image, an audio recording, or a video recording of an individual’s appearance, speech, conduct, or environment that has been created or intentionally manipulated with the use of digital technology, including artificial intelligence, in a manner that creates a realistic but false representation of the candidate,” the bill states.

Disclosure required – “A person shall not, within 90 days of an election at which a candidate for elective office will appear on the ballot, publish, communicate, or otherwise distribute a synthetic media message that the person knows or should have known is a deceptive and fraudulent synthetic media of a candidate on the ballot, unless the synthetic media includes a disclosure stating: “This media has been created or intentionally manipulated by digital technology or artificial intelligence.”

The bill has been assigned to Gov Ops.