Maker of AI parody video skewering Kamala sues California over law banning ‘deepfakes’ ahead of elections

In the filing obtained by Forbes, which comes a day after California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom signed the legislation into law, plaintiff Christopher Kohls alleges the new laws are a flagrant use of “state power to force private social media companies to censor private citizens’ speech by purging election-related AI-generated content.”

Kohls, aka @MrReaganUSA on X, posted a video in July that appeared to be a campaign video for Kamala Harris, in which an AI-generated version of the Democratic nominee’s voice recited Trump campaign pledges and mocked her pedigree, calling her the “ultimate diversity hire." The video was shared by Elon Musk on X and has been viewed over 135 million times.

In his original post, Kohls’ called the video a “Campaign Ad PARODY. However, the suit argued this likely won’t protect the plaintiff’s video because the California legislation requires a parody to be labeled in font size as large as other text in the video, which in some cases would fill almost the entire screen.

The suit, filed in the Eastern District of California federal court, argued that Kohls has an “absolute Constitutional right to lampoon politicians he believes should not be elected.” In response to the video going viral in July, Newsom pledged to sign a bill banning political deepfakes.

Musk responded by saying "I checked with renowned world authority, Professor Suggon Deeznutz, and he said parody is legal in America."

Newsom signed the series of bills while speaking on stage at Salesforce’s AI convention “Dreamforce,” one of which makes it illegal to distribute “materially deceptive audio or visual media of a candidate” 120 days before an election and in some cases, 60 days after.

The law allows candidates to use the courts to remove any deep fake ads and also sue the person who distributed them. However, parody and satire are exempt if they feature a disclosure. The law goes into effect immediately.

The other legislation requires social media platforms to remove political deepfakes and campaigns to make public disclosures if they run ads with AI-generated videos.