California Lawyer Common warns expertise leaders in opposition to voter fraud

California Attorney General Rob Bonta speaks at a press conference in February 2024.

CNBC

California Attorney General Rob Bonta called on executives of social media and other technology companies to do more to protect voters from “deception, intimidation and deterrence” in the run-up to the November election.

“Millions of Californians rely on social media and artificial intelligence to get news and information about upcoming elections, and it is critical that the platforms, products and services offered by your companies are not abused to deceive voters about their constitutional right to vote,” Bonta wrote in a letter to CEOs of alphabet, Meta, MicrosoftOpenAI, Reddit, TikTok, X and YouTube.

The letter addressed sections of California law that prohibit impairing the right to vote by misleading the public about the time and place of voting and by using intimidation tactics.

California state law “also generally prohibits the distribution of materially misleading audio or video media of a candidate on the ballot within 60 days before an election and with actual malice with the intent to damage the candidate's reputation or to deceive a voter into voting for or against the candidate,” Bonta wrote.

The letter follows pop icon Taylor Swift's endorsement of Kamala Harris for presidential candidate on Tuesday night following the debate. Swift criticized those who had circulated AI-generated images falsely claiming she had supported Donald Trump.

Trump had shared a number of these images on his platform Truth Social. Separately, X owner Elon Musk recently shared an AI-generated image showing Harris dressed as a communist dictator.

“Kamala has sworn to be a communist dictator since day one,” Musk, who supports Trump, wrote in a post on X on September 2. “Can you believe she's wearing this outfit!?”

Google's Gemini, OpenAI's Dall-E and Chat GPT, Microsoft Copilot and Grok, developed by Musk's xAI, allow users to quickly generate images and text in response to prompts or questions. In August, an updated version of the xAI product, Grok-2, appeared to have few limitations on creating fake images of politicians.

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