Rhode Island § 17-30-1 - Deceptive and Fraudulent Synthetic Media in Election Communications

§ 17-30-1. Deceptive synthetic media.

(a) For purposes of this chapter, “candidate” means and includes an incumbent or current office holder.

(b) For purposes of this chapter, “synthetic media” means an image, an audio recording, or a video recording of an individual’s appearance, speech, or conduct that has been intentionally manipulated with the use of generative adversarial network techniques or other digital technology to create a realistic but false image, audio, or video that produces:

(1) A depiction that, to a reasonable individual, appears to be a real individual in terms of appearance, action, or speech, but that did not occur in reality; and

(2) A fundamentally different understanding or impression of the appearance, action, or speech than a reasonable person would have from the unaltered, original version of the image, audio recording, or video recording.

(c) A candidate, authorized candidate campaign committee, political action committee, political party committee, or person or entity making an independent expenditure as defined in § 17-25-3 shall not, within ninety (90) days of any election at which a candidate for elective office will appear on a ballot, distribute synthetic media that the candidate, authorized candidate campaign committee, political action committee, political party committee, or person or entity making an independent expenditure as defined in § 17-25-3 knows or should know is deceptive and fraudulent synthetic media, as defined in subsection (b) of this section.

(d)(1) The prohibition in subsection (c) of this section does not apply if the image, audio recording, or video recording includes a disclosure stating that the image has been manipulated or generated by artificial intelligence.

(2) For visual media, the text of the disclosure shall appear in a size that is easily readable by the average viewer, and no smaller than the largest font size of any other text appearing in the visual media. If the visual media does not include any other text, the disclosure shall appear in a size that is easily readable by the average viewer. For visual media that is a video, the disclosure shall appear for the duration of the video.

(3) If the media consists of audio only, and no visual disclosure is feasible, the disclosure shall be read in a clearly spoken manner, and in a speed and pitch that can be easily heard by the average listener, at the beginning of the audio, at the end of the audio, and, if the audio is greater than two (2) minutes in length, interspersed within the audio at intervals of not greater than two (2) minutes.