…and it sounds like there are Republicans in the state legislature who are fine with that.

This has been a mercifully quiet legislative session so far – merciful in that we haven’t had all that many horrific bills which must not pass. We haven’t had a whole lot of legislation which would dramatically improve Louisiana’s standing, either, but the more you follow politics the more you start to realize that legislation – even the stuff  you’re very optimistic about – rarely has that result.

So we haven’t been obsessively covering this year’s Louisiana legislative session. There just hasn’t been a whole lot of interesting news coming out of it.

But late last week an utterly atrocious bill came to the floor of the House of Representatives. It’s the latest iteration of AWFL New Orleans Democrat Mandie Landry’s crusade to ban AI from Louisiana politics, a true crime of an idea if ever there was one, on multiple levels.

The bill is HB 459, and after a little bit of floor debate last week it was returned to the calendar.

HB459 would require political ads that use an AI-generated image or likeness of a candidate to include a big, garish disclosure stating artificial intelligence was used. The bill increases the maximum criminal fine for violations of campaign disclosure law from $2,000 to $10,000.

So if we were to make PAC ads showing Mandie Landry sprouting horns and a tail, we’d have to include a big disclosure saying that it was AI. Otherwise people might believe Mandie Landry can actually sprout horns and a tail.

So she doesn’t get too mad at us, we’ll admit that we’ve never seen her look like this.

Or like this…

Tamping down on political speech with criminal implications is dangerous. Falsely accusing someone of violations, should this idiotic bill ever pass, would cost money on lawyers, PR people and lots of other things, and for what?

Let’s not forget that in modern politics, the process is the punishment. If you don’t agree, go and look at what they did to Rudy Giuliani. Or John Eastman. Or Roger Stone. Or Peter Navarro. Or, obviously, Donald Trump and his family.

Many campaigns today use AI to generate ads for their own candidates. Adding an AI disclaimer for a beautifully generated campaign ad lends an air of dishonesty to a perfectly honest ad generated through use of AI graphics or video.

Let’s not forget that Rick Edmonds, who’s running for Congress and has been a House rep and now a state senator, just uncorked a fully AI set of campaign spots and mailers. Whatever you think of Edmonds’ campaign, you’ve got to admit those are memorable. We think they’re hilarious. They’d also cost a hell of a lot more if Edmonds had to hire a full set of actors, cameramen, lighting people and so on.

Cheaper political speech means more political speech. It means more messaging and a better chance for voters to vet candidates. Landry is trying to force politicians, PACs and others who are trying to persuade the public of various positions to have to spend more money to get a message across.

Which means that SS visor cap she’s wearing might not be so fanciful after all.

By the language of this bill, if Mandie Landry has a photo touched up using AI to improve her image, and she didn’t disclose that AI was used, she would be committing a crime. The bill does not distinguish between fabricated/fake images and photographs that were modified/touched up by AI.

So, be looking out for this…

It gets even dumber. When Rep. Dodie Horton got up to ask questions on the bill, asking if she wanted to make an image for her own campaign on ChatGPT, Mandie Landry cut her off to say that you can’t make images on ChatGPT, that’s for text only.

She doesn’t have the faintest clue what she’s talking about with respect to AI apps and what they do.

And when Rep. Beryl Amedee asked if she wanted to get rid of her wrinkles and grey hair with AI, does she have to reveal that? Landry said you don’t do that with AI, that’s photoshop or CGI instead of AI.

Bless your digital heart, Mandie.

This bill is the perfect example for why we’re demanding that a super-majority Republican legislature automatically kill all Democrats bills in committee unless those bills have a Republican co-sponsor. Otherwise you have stupid bills like this wasting the legislature’s time on the floor and potentially slipping through to passage while the bored reps are playing Angry Birds on their phones.

And when Mandie Landry couldn’t pass the most basic test on the capabilities and limitations of AI image and video apps that would be used in the production of political content, she damned sure ought not be bringing legislation criminalizing creative content.

Can AI be misused? Of course it can. But that’s less of a risk than giving some busybody leftist the power to fine and jail her political opponents for using modern technology to get out messages she doesn’t like.

To hell with that idea.

[and so Mandie knows, the images and video in this post were produced with Grok, Kling 2.5, Stable Diffusion – which IS ChatGPT – and finally Photoshop, but only for the mean AI warning]