Pa. House unanimously passes bill to crack down on deepfakes in political campaign ads

• By Jaxon White/LNP | LancasterOnline

House lawmakers Monday approved legislation to combat artificial intelligence that is used to mislead voters by impersonating political candidates.

The bill, passed in a unanimous vote, would require campaigns to disclose when they use AI-generated deepfakes that mimic a candidate’s appearance or voice.

Under the bill, political campaigns and organizations that do not disclose their use of a deepfake in an advertisement could be fined every day the ad runs. That daily fine would be up to $15,000 in municipal elections, $50,000 in state elections and $250,000 in federal elections.

Philadelphia Democrat Tarik Khan, the bill’s sponsor, told his colleagues during floor debate that lawmakers must protect the public from “bad actors.”

Jeremy Shaffer, an Allegheny County Republican who co-sponsored the bill, added that the proposal would “help protect our elections.”

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Supporters have acknowledged there is one weak point in the bill: It would impact advertisements that run only 90 days before an election.

But Khan told lawmakers before a committee vote earlier this month that he views the legislation as a first step toward further regulation, and that legislators could always expand the bill in the future.

According to Khan’s office, Pennsylvania would join at least 14 other states that have voted to restrict AI use in political campaigns if lawmakers pass his legislation this year.

The state GOP praised the bill’s House passage in a statement Monday, calling it “a smart step toward preserving election integrity and transparency in the digital age.” The state Democratic Party did not respond to a request for comment.

Khan’s bill clearing the House was considered a win for democracy by Philip Hensley-Robin, executive director at good-governance advocacy group Common Cause Pennsylvania. He said deepfakes pose a threat to keeping the public accurately informed.

“The misuse of deepfakes in campaigns is something that is not purely theoretical,” Hensley-Robin said. “We’ve seen it in the U.S. and abroad.”

Hensley-Robin pointed to when unsuccessful New Jersey gubernatorial hopeful Josh Gottheimer, a Democratic congressman, ran an AI-generated commercial of himself in a boxing ring opposite President Donald Trump.

That ad, under Khan’s bill, Hensley-Robin said, would’ve needed to disclose its AI use to represent Trump.

Margaret Durkin, Pennsylvania’s executive director at tech-advocacy firm TechNet, said her organization hasn’t taken a position on Khan’s legislation, but she urged lawmakers to ensure “liability for dissemination of such media is limited to the person who creates and disseminates it, and not on intermediaries such as internet service providers, platforms or tools.”

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Next steps

Khan’s bill now heads to the Republican-controlled Senate, which unanimously passed a bill earlier this month to classify nonconsensual deepfakes as digital forgery. That bipartisan legislation, sponsored by Republican Sen. Tracy Pennycuick, cleared the House Judiciary Committee in a 25-1 vote Monday.

Pennycuick, chair of the Senate Communications & Technology Committee, did not say whether she would advance Khan’s bill through her committee.

“It’s imperative that both chambers continue to work on these issues now as AI scams and misinformation will only become more sophisticated and dangerous to combat,” she said in a statement.

Pennsylvania’s AI regulations are advancing through the General Assembly as Congress considers a moratorium on state AI restrictions for the next decade — a provision within the House GOP’s megabill that cleared a procedural hurdle in the Senate over the weekend.

Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday and several state lawmakers have publicly criticized the proposed ban.