California Governor Gavin Newsom just signed a new bill into law last night banning memes. Literally banning memes. So if you live in California and you post those short videos using deepfake face swaps or voice cloning technology, which thankfully the overwhelming majority of the content so far that such technology is used to create is just parodies, satire, memes. But now you’re going to have to literally label your meme a meme or you will be arrested. Now on the surface, this actually sounds like a good idea and there needs to be some serious legislation and regulation regarding deepfakes and AI and voice cloning, but this ain’t it.

And this legislation wasn’t inspired because a deepfake went viral and undermined the integrity election system or tried to defame somebody and smear them like the incident we saw earlier this year in Maryland when a black gym teacher cloned the voice of the school principal and then made it sound like he was saying a bunch of racist stuff and then gave that audio to a student who then passed it around social media and the principal was then suspended, pending an investigation surprisingly and luckily not fired. Suspended, pending a lengthy investigation that involved the FBI and they determined in a university which analyzed the audio, determined that it was indeed fake and then thankfully the black gym teacher was arrested, but it wasn’t an incident like that that inspired Gavin Newsom to try to crack down on the deepfakes.

It was literally a meme. Gavin Newsom signs election deepfake ban in rebuke to Elon Musk. California now has the nation’s most aggressive law in place on AI generated content before the November election. This started back at the end of July when Elon Musk retweeted an obvious parody Kamala Harris campaign ad that cloned her voice and made her say a bunch of truthful things that obviously she would never say and again obviously it was a parody but that upset Governor Gavin Newsom because well the left can’t meme and the left doesn’t understand memes because they don’t have a sense of humor.

Gavin posted this on Twitter manipulating a voice in an ad like this should be illegal. I’ll be signing a bill in a matter of weeks to make sure that it is responding to a headline from I think NBC News that claimed that Elon Musk retweeted altered Kamala Harris campaign ad. In the video Harris seemingly exposes herself as an incompetent candidate for president. The origin of the video isn’t known yet and while I am a professional media analyst with a bachelor’s degree in communication from California State University in case anybody cares, it certainly doesn’t take any education or training.

It takes nothing other than common sense to actually notice that the origin of the parody video was YouTuber Mr. Reagan who titled it Kamala Harris campaign ad parody and put his watermark up there in the corner and put his watermark on the bumper at the very end signifying that he made it. Here’s this part of the parody in case you missed it. I Kamala Harris and your Democrat candidate for president because Joe Biden finally exposed to senility of the debate. Thanks Joe. I was selected because I am the ultimate diversity hire.

I’m both a woman and a person of color so if you criticize anything I say you’re both sexist and racist. Joe taught me rule number one carefully hide your total incompetence. I take insignificant things and I discuss them as if they’re significant and I believe that exploring the significance of the insignificant is in itself significant. Talking about this. So then last night nuisance responded to his previous tweet saying I just signed a bill to make this illegal in the state of California. You can no longer knowingly distribute an ad or other election communications that contain materially deceptive content including deepfakes.

Actually sir the first amendment says otherwise which the courts have specifically ruled protects parody and satire in the hustler versus fall case back in 1988 which noted that parody which no reasonable person expects to be true is protected free speech. Well I certainly hope that C3P meme who is I would say the best deepfake meme maker on the planet doesn’t live in California otherwise posting memes like this on his YouTube channel and Twitter will get him arrested now. That is our ABC News presidential debate from here in Philadelphia at the National Constitution Center.

I’m Wednesday Davis and I’m David Muir. Thank you for watching here in the U.S. and all over the world and from all of us here at ABC News. Gavin Newsom is so cool preparing his 2028 campaign and I’m sure a little disappointed that there wasn’t an open Democrat convention where he could have been the Democrat nominee this time around. He’s so cool that he signed the bill during an event that he was at last night. There are a lot of deepfakes out there there’s not a lot of disclosure there’s not a lot of labeling so among the many AI bills that are on the desk are three specific election related bills.

Do you want to sign some laws? Yeah, ban the memes sir. Why waste your time with a politician unless they’re gonna do something for you. Two are signed and three are signed. Now official that is now injunctive relief if you do any of those deepfake election misrepresentations so that’s how easy it is to govern. That’s how easy it is to attempt to repeal the First Amendment but I’m sure that the U.S. Supreme Court will have something else to say. But we’re talking about a regime that indicted and got a kangaroo court of jurors in New York to convict a meme maker of a meme that he posted in 2016, Douglas Mackey, joking about the Democrats texting in their vote for Hillary to skip the lines.

He was indicted in 2021 like a week after Joe Biden was sworn into office so five years after he posted his obvious parody one of the first things that the Biden Justice Department did was indict him, convict him, and then sentenced him to seven months in prison for posting a meme. And as California goes so goes the nation. They almost always lead the country in ridiculous legislation and social justice trends so buckle up. Hillary Clinton also wants us arrested here she is talking with Richard Maddow on MSNBC promoting her latest book where she was also complaining about the media not demonizing Donald Trump as the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler enough.

She also claims that anybody who was posting memes or posting facts or opinions that the Democrats don’t like are engaged in a disinformation campaign and need to be arrested because you might be a Russian agent and boosting Trump back in 2016. But I also think there are Americans who are engaged in this kind of propaganda and whether they should be civilly or even in some cases criminally charged is something that would be a better deterrence. And speaking of memes I had my graphic designer come up with this gem like two months ago after the first Trump assassination attempt I just never got around to policing it until just now of Donald Trump as Neo in The Matrix inspired from the famous scene when Neo realizes that he’s the one and he can stop bullets.

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