Florida bill to regulate AI political ads passes the House
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The Florida House of Representatives passed legislation that would mandate disclaimers on political ads that contain certain content generated through artificial intelligence, or AI.
Rep. Alex Rizo, R-Hialeah, sponsored the bill, HB 919, which passed 104-8.
“Now for the first time, there is a real concern to change reality on people,” Rizo said.
He said nationally they saw an AI generated robo-call of President Joe Biden telling people to “stay home and don’t go vote,” and “a number of people did.”
Rizo said he believes this will not be the last of legislation regarding artificial intelligence.
According to the bill, those who ignore the requirement could face civil penalties.
An amendment was added previously to the bill that specifically defined the wording requirements for the disclaimer, as well as the audio and visual guidelines for the various forms of advertising mediums.
The bill defines “generative artificial intelligence” as a “machine-based system that can, for a given set of human-defined objectives, emulate the structure and characteristics of input data in order to generate derived synthetic content including images, videos, audio, text, and other digital content,” according to the bill’s analysis.
Sen. Nick DiCeglie, R-St. Petersburg, is carrying the Senate version of the legislation, which has yet to be passed by the full Senate.
The Florida Election Code requires certain disclaimers for political advertisements, electioneering
communications, miscellaneous advertisements and voter guides, the analysis said.
Such disclaimers generally must disclose “who has paid for or sponsored the advertisement or electioneering communication.”
The Florida Elections Commission has “jurisdiction to investigate and determine campaign finance violations, as well as other violations of the Florida Election Code.”
The bill permits a complaint to be filed with the commission “if such disclaimer is not included on the advertisement or communication.”
It also “requires the commission to adopt rules to provide for expedited hearings of such complaints,” according to the bill’s analysis.
