A new bill focusing on the regulation of artificial intelligence in political advertisements has been passed by a Florida Senate committee. This occurred in a session where the Senate Committee on Ethics and Elections also passed several bills related to campaign finance, including one that restricts the term lengths of county commissioners.

Senate Bill 850, specifically targeting the role of artificial intelligence in Florida's political landscape, was introduced by Sen. Nick DiCeglie, a Republican from St. Petersburg. He explained to the committee that the bill is designed to tackle issues associated with misleading campaign advertising. This is to be achieved by mandating that political ads created using AI technology carry disclaimers, Just The News reports.

“The increasing access to sophisticated AI-generated content threatens the integrity of elections by facilitating the dissemination of misleading or completely fabricated information that appears more realistic than ever," DiCeguile stated, adding, “The technology that produces this content has advanced rapidly and outpaced government regulation.”

DiCeglie stated that the legislation goes on to clarify generative AI as a machine-driven system capable of mimicking the structure and attributes of input data to create synthetic content such as images, videos, audio, and text, all based on a specified set of human objectives.

The committee gave a favorable report for Senate Joint Resolution 1114 and its accompanying bill, SB 1116, both of which are sponsored by Senator Travis Hutson, a Republican from Palm Coast. This resolution aims to modify the state Constitution by eliminating the public financing program for statewide elections.