Opinion | Regulate AI campaign ads? That isn't the American way.
- 31 states have already banned or regulated AI deepfake campaign ads, but federal judges are striking them down as unconstitutional.
- Historical precedent: a fake letter nearly cost James Garfield the 1880 presidency (won by 1,898 votes), and no one tried to ban the tabloid.
- Modern rebuttal speed: AI allows candidates to respond within 24 hours, unlike Garfield's week-long handwriting defense, making regulation obsolete.
- Current tort law & FCC fines (like the $6M Biden robocall penalty) already handle malicious deepfakes without new election law.
- The ACLU's Burt Neuborne argues criminalizing political speech only chills legitimate expression and empowers political weaponization.
Brief Summary
Max Raskin argues the current hysteria over AI-generated campaign ads is a solution in search of a problem. He points out that political forgery, caricature, and image-splicing have been election mainstays since the 1800s — from Thomas Nast's cartoons to a faked letter that nearly cost President Garfield his narrow win. The only difference today is that AI lowers the production cost, but it also lowers the cost of a rebuttal, making the free-market of truth faster than any lawmaker's rulebook.
The piece lambasts the 31 state bans and federal bills as a 'waste of time' and an 'encroachment on liberties.' Raskin's punchline: existing defamation and false-light torts, plus FCC enforcement (like the Biden robocall fine), already cover the harm. Judges, he claims, are rightly striking down these laws, proving that the Founding Fathers' vision of robust, ugly political speech trumps the modern impulse to sanitize campaigning with a regulatory straitjacket.
Why This Matters
This is your annual reminder that politicians have always lied, cheated, and photoshopped — they've just upgraded from scissors to algorithms. The real threat isn't the AI ad itself; it's the folksy belief that any new law will make campaigns honest. You already don't trust the 30-second attack ads — do you honestly need a federal statute to tell you that the AI-generated video of your governor robbing a bank is fake? You don't, and Raskin rightly says the government shouldn't presume you're that stupid.
Here's the stakes: if you care about a free marketplace of ideas, over-regulating AI ads is how you get a political system where only the wealthy can afford to mock opponents without fear of litigation. The upside of this cynicism is that it forces you to stay skeptical and engaged — the ultimate defense against deepfakes isn't a law, it's your own two eyes and a basic fact-check. The downside? Every time a court strikes down a ban, expect a new flood of bizarre AI videos, and remember that the cure of censorship is worse than the disease of a fake Bible-reading opponent.