Okay, so I have a few points in rebuttal, but I think we’re generally on the same page. I would absolutely support a ban on political parties using deepfakes of opponents in attack ads or otherwise broadcasting them. Infact, I would support more than just fines. If it was discovered after the polls, I would support a full recall of the election. I’d suggest deregistration from that election as well, but I’d hope the voting public can show it’s distaste for that behaviour. I’d also support some level of required due diligence for news media in ensuring what they’re publishing is real. Though there has to be consideration of the suppression of important information. Can you imagine if the Watergate tapes were never released because it couldn’t be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were real?

So I guess that brings me to my problem with this petition. It seems to be asking for a general ban on the entire population, and that’s just not something I can support. There is, and should be, higher standards of ethics expected of both of these groups. However, I don’t think it should be enforced on the average citizen. They just don’t have the ability to get that stuff in front of eyeballs without help.

The other side of this (I know we’d basically be pissing into the wind with how small we are) is that regulations targeting the companies themselves needs to be a part of this. You should never be able to type in the name of a notable figure (or anyone, really) into a generative AI and get it to spit out an image/video of that person. It’s being used to make porn of celebrities which is incredibly damaging, but there’s now been cases of students creating it of other students by feeding it pictures. If AI companies won’t create safeguards, we need to make them. As it stands, it requires an immense amount of power to train picture/video-generating AIs that can fool people. So targeting larger actors makes the most sense.