HB1766

SECTION 1. The legislature finds that deepfakes are any form of media that has been altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone, typically in a way that shows the person saying something that was never said. Deceptive and fraudulent deepfakes have become a tool for political misinformation that further disrupts public trust in government. Legislation has been enacted in various jurisdictions, including California, Michigan, Minnesota, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin to prevent and punish the spread of misinformation through deepfakes.

The purpose of this Act is to hinder the spread of political misinformation in the State by prohibiting the distribution of electioneering communications before an election that a person knows or should have known are deceptive and fraudulent deepfakes of a candidate or party.

SECTION 2. Chapter 11, Hawaii Revised Statutes, is amended by adding a new section to be appropriately designated and to read as follows:

"§11- Synthetic media; deceptive and fraudulent deepfake; prohibitions; exceptions. (a) Except as provided in subsection (b), no person shall, within ninety days prior to a primary or general election, distribute a synthetic media message in an electioneering communication that the person knows or should have known is a deceptive and fraudulent deepfake of a candidate or party.

(b) The prohibition in subsection (a) shall not apply if the electioneering communication containing the synthetic media includes a disclosure statement stating: "This [image/audio/recording/video recording] has been manipulated or generated by artificial intelligence.", and:

(1) If the media consists of an audio recording only, the disclosure statement shall be read in a clearly spoken manner and in a pitch that can be easily heard by the average listener, at the beginning of the audio, at the end of the audio, and, if the audio is greater than two minutes in length, interspersed within the audio at intervals of no more than two minutes each; and

(2) For visual recordings, the text of the disclosure statement shall appear in a size that is easily readable by the average viewer and no smaller than the largest font size of other text appearing in the visual media; provided that if the visual media does not include any other text, the disclosure statement shall appear in a size that is easily readable by the average viewer; provided further that for visual media that is video, the disclosure statement shall appear for the duration of the video.

(c) A candidate whose appearance, action, or speech is depicted through the use of a deceptive and fraudulent deepfake in violation of subsection (a) may seek injunctive or other equitable relief prohibiting the publication of the deceptive and fraudulent deepfake.

(d) The campaign spending commission may conduct investigations into the publication of deceptive and fraudulent deepfakes and assess administrative fines.

(e) A candidate whose appearance, action, or speech is depicted using a deceptive and fraudulent deepfake in violation of subsection (a) may bring an action for general or special damages against the person that distributed the deceptive and fraudulent deepfake. The court may award a prevailing party reasonable attorneys' fees and costs.

(f) Nothing in this section shall limit or preclude a plaintiff from seeking any other available civil remedy.

(g) This section shall not apply to:

(1) A radio or television broadcasting station, including a cable or satellite television operator, programmer, or producer, that broadcasts synthetic media as part of a bona fide newscast, news interview, news documentary, or on-the-spot coverage of bona fide news events, if the broadcast clearly acknowledges through content or a disclosure statement, in a manner that can be easily heard or read by the average listener or viewer, that there are questions about the authenticity of the synthetic media;

(2) A radio or television broadcasting station, including a cable or satellite television operator, programmer, or producer, when the station is paid to broadcast a synthetic media and has made a good faith effort to establish the depiction in the synthetic media is not a deceptive and fraudulent deepfake;

(3) An internet website, or a regularly published newspaper, magazine, or other periodical of general circulation, including an internet or electronic publication, that routinely carries news and commentary of general interest, and that publishes deceptive and fraudulent deepfakes prohibited by this section, if the publication clearly states that the deceptive and fraudulent deepfake does not accurately represent the speech or conduct of the candidate; and

(4) Synthetic media that constitutes satire or parody.

(h) If any provision of this section, or the application thereof to any person or circumstance, is held invalid, the invalidity does not affect other provisions or applications of this section that can be given effect without the invalid provision or application, and to this end the provisions of this section are severable.

(i) As used in this section:

"Artificial intelligence" means:

(1) An artificial system that performs tasks under varying and unpredictable circumstances without significant human oversight or that can learn from experience and improve performance when exposed to data sets;

(2) An artificial system developed in computer software, physical hardware, or other context that solves tasks requiring human-like perception, cognition, planning, learning, communication, or physical action;

(3) An artificial system designed to think or act like a human, including cognitive architectures and neural networks;

(4) A set of techniques, including machine learning, that is designed to approximate a cognitive task; or

(5) An artificial system designed to act rationally, including an intelligent software agent or embodied robot that achieves goals using perception, planning, reasoning, learning, communicating, decision-making, and acting.

"Deceptive and fraudulent deepfake" means synthetic media that depicts a candidate or party with the intent to injure the reputation of the candidate or party or otherwise deceive a voter and that:

(1) Appears to a reasonable person to depict a real individual saying or doing something that did not actually occur in reality; or

(2) Provides a reasonable person a fundamentally different understanding or impression of the appearance, action, or speech than a reasonable person would have from the unaltered, original version of an image, an audio recording, or a video recording.

"Synthetic media" means an image, an audio recording, or a video recording of an individual's appearance, speech, or conduct that has been created or intentionally manipulated with the use of generative adversarial network techniques or other digital technology in a manner to create a realistic but false image, audio recording, or video recording."

SECTION 3. New statutory material is underscored.

SECTION 4. This Act shall take effect upon its approval.

INTRODUCED BY:	_____________________________

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES	H.B. NO.	1766
THIRTY-SECOND LEGISLATURE, 2024
STATE OF HAWAII