Billionaire businessman Elon Musk has torn into California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom for outlawing deceptive political AI videos or deepfakes, saying “The Joker is in charge.”
Musk, a Donald Trump-supporter, and frequent critic of Newsom, the Democratic Party, and left-wing policy in California, made a series of posts on his social media platform X, Wednesday and Thursday, claiming that Newsom’s law is an infringement on free speech.
Newsom signed the law on Tuesday which bans digitally altered political videos. He promised to sign such a law in late July after Musk reposted a deepfake video of Vice President Kamala Harris where she appears to expose herself as an incompetent presidential candidate.
This year marks the first U.S. presidential election where AI-deepfake videos of politicians have been prominently shared on social media. Whether they are substantially defamatory, which is not protected by the First Amendment, or if they are satire, which is protected, or something else entirely, has not been conclusively settled in U.S. law.
In reply to a post condemning Newsom’s law, which taunts “memes are illegal”, Musk writes: “The Joker is in charge,” and he also reposts a picture of Newsom alongside the Batman villain.
He also reposted the initial deepfake video which provoked Newsom into passing the law, writing “You’re not gonna believe this, but @GavinNewsom just announced that he signed a LAW to make parody illegal, based on this video.”
Replying to a post which said “and some people still wonder why X moved out of California,” Musk wrote: “hard to be a free speech platform in a state that wants to ban free speech.”
Musk has frequently shared AI-generated images on his X account which represent Trump in a positive light and Harris in a negative light.
California Governor Gavin Newsom, left, and billionaire Elon Musk. Musk has torn into Newsom for outlawing deceptive political AI videos or deepfakes.
Bastiaan Slabbers, Francis Chung/ASSOCIATED PRESS
While Musk markets X as a free speech social media platform, the company is free to demote, promote, or delete posts as it sees fit. The recent Supreme Court Ruling NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton clarified that the right of social media companies to moderate content on their own properties is protected by the First Amendment.
Musk has been accused of manipulating the platform to benefit his own posts and has suspended the accounts of journalists who cover him.
Several major advertisers have stopped advertising on X because of Musk’s posts.
The platform stopped publishing its earnings after he took over in 2022, but the New York Times reported in July that eMarketer, a market research agency estimated X’s revenue dropped by 52 percent in 2023 and would continue to drop in 2024. He acquired it for $44 billion, a year later it was valued at $19 billion.
Newsweek has contacted Newsom’s office by phone and X for comment via email.
