Gavin Newsom

Gavin Newsom Loves AI Satire Now!

Thank goodness that judge struck down the legislation he supported.

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Gavin Newsom | Efren Landaos/Sipa USA/Newscom
Gavin Newsom (Efren Landaos/Sipa USA/Newscom)

It looks like California Gov. Gavin Newsom has learned to stop worrying and love fake, AI-generated political satire videos—or at least, he loves them enough to share one on X.

Newsom has discovered a meme streak that is positively Trump-ian as of late, and now constantly publishes troll-ish posts on social media, with the aim of getting under the president's skin and also calling attention to himself; he seems to be succeeding on this second goal, and is currently arguably the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.

Here was his latest contribution: a heavily manipulated video of Vice President J.D. Vance discussing the government shutdown. (Note the squeaky voice and cartoonish wardrobe embellishments.)

There's nothing wrong with this, of course. Newsom is free to use his own speech to belittle Trump, Vance, or anyone else. The irony, however, is that Newsom adamantly tried to prevent other people from doing something incredibly similar.

Indeed, Newsom is a major advocate of legislation to criminalize so-called deep fakes: convincing misrepresentations of other people on social media. In the midst of Kamala Harris's 2024 presidential campaign, Elon Musk retweeted a fake, AI-engineered video of Harris appearing to admit to being a DEI pick; the video used AI to accurately mimic her voice. Newsom wrote on X that this should be illegal, and shared that he would soon be banning the practice in California. Sure enough, the governor signed the deep fake bill into law a few weeks later.

Unfortunately for Newsom, the First Amendment broadly protects political satire, even if the underlying speech is wrong or misleading. And so a federal judge struck down the law—just in time for Election Day—noting that it "hinders humorous expression and unconstitutionally stifles the free and unfettered exchange of ideas."

Now that the governor is enjoying channeling his inner troll, perhaps he has gained more appreciation for this right. One can perhaps argue that the optics of the Vance video make it much more obviously fake than the sound from the Harris video, but this is a difference of distinctions. It's key that the widest possible latitude be given to speech that makes fun of politicians, as there is no kind of expression more obviously protected by the First Amendment.

 

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Worth Watching

I am hard at work on the novel I vowed to write two weeks ago: In fact, I've actually already written about 18,000 words. I imagine it will be at least 100,000 words when I've finished. It feels really refreshing to be working on a creative project again. Last night I stayed up way, way too late writing it, as I realized very suddenly that I was going to reveal a notable side character as evil, and I was determined to make it to the scene where he outs himself.