California Governor Gavin Newsom Takes Severe
Judge John Mendez’s ruling didn’t deny that
AI deepfakes can poison democracy;
it declared that California cannot silence them by
criminalizing speech or forcing platforms to scrub it.
By striking down both the content-focused ban and
the takedown mandate as unconstitutional and preempted by Section 230,
he sided firmly with a long line of cases that protect even disturbing,
deceptive political expression. The Babylon Bee, X, and
Rumble emerged as unlikely standard-bearers for that principle.
The decision leaves California entering its first generative-AI election
cycle with almost no bespoke guardrails, despite lawmakers’ vivid
warnings of fake videos, robocalls, and images designed to warp voter behavior.
The burden now shifts to voters, campaigns, and platforms to build new norms of
verification and skepticism. Instead of government deciding what is “true”
enough to publish, the ruling forces democracy to confront AI chaos in the open—and survive it.
