Sacramento — Elon Musk and his company, X, have filed a lawsuit to halt the implementation of one of California’s flagship anti-disinformation laws. The company is challenging the constitutionality of AB 2655, which makes social media companies responsible for the election-related disinformation that proliferates on their platforms. 

The law, sponsored by the California Initiative for Technology and Democracy (CITED), a project of California Common Cause, represents some of the most assertive steps taken anywhere in the nation to address the dangers that AI and disinformation pose to our elections. 

“Our democracy — and the people’s right to accurate information about our elections — is not up for negotiation,” said Jonathan Mehta Stein, executive director of California Common Cause. “We cannot allow billionaire oligarchs to chip away at the integrity of our government institutions for their financial and political gain.”

AB 2655, authored by Assemblymember Marc Berman, combats online disinformation in our elections by placing first-in-the-nation requirements on large online platforms to remove or label deceptive AI deepfakes related to elections during specified periods, and requires them to provide mechanisms to report such content. It also authorizes candidates, elected officials, elections officials, the Attorney General, and a district attorney or city attorney to seek injunctive relief against a large online platform for noncompliance with the bill.

The outcome of this case will have nationwide implications. California is the home base for the world’s largest and most powerful social media platforms and AI companies — while the state has benefited enormously from the companies’ contributions to the innovation economy, tech stands as one of the last unregulated industries. 

“It should come as no surprise that a company like X seeks to halt the first law that would hold their immense power to account,” added Stein. “Earlier this year, Elon Musk’s sharing of a misleading deepfake video of Vice President Kamala Harris, which was viewed 150 million times in one week on X, represented just one drop in a sea of disinformation that continues to grow. That’s why the only lasting solution is passing common-sense regulations to ensure our democracy is safe from AI-driven disinformation.”

Deepfakes have already destabilized national elections in Argentina, India, Slovakia, Taiwan, Bangladesh, and most recently, the 2024 US presidential election. Just as this problem is peaking, many technology and social media platforms have decreased their investments in their trust and safety teams and have walked away from any responsibility to address it. This has left voters to pick up the pieces, not knowing what images, audio, and video they can trust.

Common Cause first identified deepfakes and AI-driven disinformation as a serious threat to our democracy years ago, launching the California Initiative for Technology and Democracy (CITED) in November 2023 to help California lead the fight for solutions to the threats that disinformation, AI, deepfakes, and other emerging technologies pose to our democracy and elections. 

With Congress hopelessly gridlocked, CITED stepped up and worked to pass the country’s toughest laws to fix the problem of AI disinformation via the California Legislature, AB 2655 and AB 2839, because just like with climate standards and automobile emissions, passing such a law in California can yield nationwide results.