AI Pushback: Governments Eye Action on Political Ads, Deepfakes

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to ban AI-generated images from state politics. Canada may restrict “deepfakes” after the uproar over Grok “undressing” photos. New Jersey restricts phone use in schools. Vermont beer-makers are struggling.

As we mention here regularly, Decision Points primarily focuses on national and international news. But we also occasionally deliver a roundup of local, regional or under-the-radar news with a political dimension – something unusual or interesting, or that may illustrate a broader trend.

Our guiding principle is that the definition of politics includes how a society organizes itself to allocate finite or scarce resources, manage internal disagreements and blunt external threats.

Here’s this week’s look around.

Hochul, a Democrat, said Sunday that she wants to forbid sharing AI-generated images of people, including candidates, without their consent in the 90 days before an election, the New York Times reported.

It’s not academic. The Times noted that, in last year’s New York mayoral race, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s campaign released an AI video showing Zohran Mamdani, who went on to win that contest, eating rice with his hands. “It also suggested that his supporters were criminals who beat their wives, sold drugs and drove drunk.”

Other states, like Texas and Minnesota, have similar bans.

The question is whether such limitations will pass constitutional muster. Wouldn’t freedom of speech extend to caricaturing political candidates?

Evan Solomon, Canada’s minister of artificial intelligence and digital innovation, said on the hellscape formerly known as Twitter over the weekend that our northern neighbor may take action to rein in sexualized deepfake images and videos.

“Deepfake sexual abuse is violence,” Solomon said. “We must protect Canadians, especially women and young people, from exploitation. Platforms and AI developers have a duty to prevent this harm.”

How? By amending Canada’s criminal code to list deepfakes among the “intimate images” that it’s illegal to publish.

This was also not academic. It came after the controversy that erupted when users of Elon Musk’s Grok AI used that module to digitally undress people (mostly women), putting them in tiny bikinis and striking sexual poses.

New Jersey has joined a phalanx of states that restrict the use of cell phones during the school day, the Associated Press reported.

A law just signed by Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy “specifically requires the prohibition of non-academic uses of internet-connected devices – including phones – during the school day.”

Nearly 20 states have enacted similar restrictions during the school day. It looks like one of the last issues in American politics to have wide bipartisan support.

If you have read my work for a while, you know that I bang on about how local news can actually be national or international news. And so it is with this Seven Days report out of my home state of Vermont about struggling craft brewers.

Against the backdrop of the final days of state brewery Simple Roots, we hear about “the latest casualties in an industry-wide slowdown that’s claimed more than 800 craft breweries around the country in the past two years.” There’s the national angle.

How about the international dimension? “Tourism is down in Burlington, and the whole state has seen a sharp decrease in Canadian visitors since President Donald Trump took office last year.”

If you are more of a “the pint’s half full” sort of person, consider that Vermont had fewer than 25 breweries in 2011 and today boasts 77 – “the highest number of breweries per capita in the country,” per Seven Days.

Don’t pour one out for the industry just yet.