Free Speech Unmuted: Defamation Law in the Age of AI with Lyrissa Lidsky

My cohost Jane Bambauer and I are joined by Prof. Lyrissa Lidsky (Florida), who is also a co-reporter for the American Law Institute's Restatement (Third) of Torts: Defamation and Privacy.

What happens when 1970s defamation law collides with the Internet, social media, and AI? Lyrissa, my cohost Jane Bambauer, and I discuss explains how the law of libel and slander is being rewritten for the digital age; why the old line between libel and slander no longer makes sense; how Section 230 upended defamation doctrine; the future of New York Times v. Sullivan and related First Amendment doctrines; Large Libel Models (when Large Language Models meet libel law); and more.

Our past episodes:

• From Brandenburg to Britain: Rethinking Free Speech in the Digital Era with Eric Heinze
• A Conversation with FIRE's Greg Lukianoff
• Free Speech Unmuted: President Trump's Executive Order on Flag Desecration
• Free Speech and Doxing
• The Supreme Court Rules on Protecting Kids from Sexually Themed Speech Online
• Free Speech, Public School Students, and "There Are Only Two Genders"
• Can AI Companies Be Sued for What AI Says?
• Harvard vs. Trump: Free Speech and Government Grants
• Trump's War on Big Law
• Can Non-Citizens Be Deported For Their Speech?
• Freedom of the Press, with Floyd Abrams
• Free Speech, Private Power, and Private Employees
• Court Upholds TikTok Divestiture Law
• Free Speech in European (and Other) Democracies, with Prof. Jacob Mchangama
• Protests, Public Pressure Campaigns, Tort Law, and the First Amendment
• Misinformation: Past, Present, and Future
• I Know It When I See It: Free Speech and Obscenity Laws
• Speech and Violence
• Emergency Podcast: The Supreme Court's Social Media Cases
• Internet Policy and Free Speech: A Conversation with Rep. Ro Khanna
• Free Speech, TikTok (and Bills of Attainder!), with Prof. Alan Rozenshtein
• The 1st Amendment on Campus with Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky
• Free Speech On Campus
• AI and Free Speech
• Free Speech, Government Persuasion, and Government Coercion
• Deplatformed: The Supreme Court Hears Social Media Oral Arguments
• Book Bans – or Are They?

Comments

[Stephen Lathrop]

Interesting discussion on an important topic.

Too bad there is not a transcript. In a discussion about a subject so nuanced, it is hard to remark with confidence from my notes, which missed a lot.

Two general points:

First, it was a discussion between lawyers, who seem largely innocent of the practicalities of publishing. Without insight into publishing as a business, the discussion tends to bypass critical issues which cannot be left aside during a discussion of expressive freedom, unless that discussion intends to leave publishing off the agenda.

Second, the notion of an end to the distinction between libel and slander may make sense in context of a discussion focused only on expressive issues of interest to individuals expressing themselves personally as citizens. In context of a discussion encompassing all of: public discourse, internet platforms, broadcast media, newspapers, book publishers, and others, the situation is different. With regard to those, the law cannot be alike for libel and slander.

I suggest EV and his associates seek explanations in depth from successful publishers capable to explain why libel laws remain indispensable to public discourse, and hence to ability to defray the costs of private publishing.

I agree that libel laws need reform, by the way. But not to the extent of abolishing any legal distinction between institutional publishing and private utterance. To do that would unwisely excise the press freedom clause from the First Amendment.