South Australia has become the first state or territory to ban AI-generated political ads and deepfakes aimed at misleading voters, with the changes coming into effect on Monday.
Political parties, MPs and candidates, as well as their representatives, now face fines of up to $10,000 for breaches under the changes, which also prohibit intrusive robocalls and robopolls.
Other aspects of the state’s “world-leading” electoral reforms, including a ban on most political donations and caps on party spending, are already in place, ahead of next year’s state election.
Deepfakes — digitally manipulated images, audio or video files that realistically but falsely depict real people — have proved a growing challenge for electoral agencies since the widespread adoption of generative AI.
The Australian Electoral Commission has repeatedly warned it is currently ill equipped to deal with the torrent of online misinformation being produced with AI.
In South Australia, which has already criminalised sexually explicit deepfakes, the new state-based laws will apply if people are caught using AI-generated deepfakes to create electoral ads that falsely depict a person performing acts they did not do.
Carveouts in the Electoral (Accountability and Integrity) Amendment Bill 2024 will, however, allow a person to consent to their image being used in a deepfake advertisement, but it will need to be clearly labelled as such, the government said.
The government has also put an end to robocalls and robopolls related to state elections, making good on a 2019 pledge that responded to calls for a ban after a blunder by the state’s Liberal Party.
Deputy Premier Kyam Maher said the government’s “ban on political donations was just the beginning of this robust suite of reforms aimed to protect and strengthen our democracy”.
“One thing that is becoming more apparent by the day is that we need to be on our guard to protect against misinformation online, and our laws banning the use of misleading deepfakes in political advertising is an important step in keeping up with this technology,” he said.
“We know that South Australians are sick and tired of political robocalls, which are becoming all too frequent. Our reforms mean that political robocalls and robopolls are now banned for state elections.”
The ACT’s Electoral Commission has also reportedly called for new laws to address deepfakes, arguing that the current regulatory framework is “insufficient”.
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