On July’s last day this year, Paul Jacob considered the sad self-parody that is “the governor of California, unhappy with a popular video.”
The full story turns out to have long legs:
The video’s maker may have thought he was covering every base by calling it a parody in the very title, an indignity of self-labeling that Jonathan Swift would never have permitted. People consuming Swift’s satire were left to figure out for themselves that when he proposed that the children of poor people be eaten to render them “beneficial to the publick,” he was engaging in satire.
In contrast, the Kamela Harris campaign ad parody in question is called “Kamala Harris Campaign Ad Parody.” Clear. Unmistakable.
Like the content.
Still, this video has not escaped the agenda of would-be censors like Governor Gavin Newsom. The parody uses a “deepfake” AI-generated voice that sounds like Harris. It’s even got the Harris Cackle. So Newsom wants to outlaw it.
“Manipulating a voice in an ‘ad’ like this one should be illegal,” he says. (Why?) “I’ll be signing a bill … to make sure it is.”
But as Reclaim the Net points out, California has already outlawed certain uses of deepfake media.
These forbidden uses do not, however, include parody, which is constitutionally protected speech.
Today’s update finds that the story became big news this week, as the governor did indeed sign the bill into law.
There have been many reactions, including by Dave Rubin, who got a rise out of California resident Drew Pinsky. “As goes California, so goes Canada and the EU … and now Brazil, too,” Dr.Pinsky who went on to characterize Newsom as a man who “thinks he is a trendsetter.” That’s a kind of power. The power to lead. Even if for evil, against the Constitution of the United States and the American free speech tradition.
But why is the story really coming up again, after a lag of several months?
The Babylon Bee. The satire site ultimate AI parody of Newsom had been making the social media rounds:
And that is not the only tweak of Newsom from the Christian humor site.