New California law will change the internet forever as ‘digital fingerprints’ added

California is putting a digital leash on AI fakes.

A landmark new state law taking effect this week will require artificial intelligence companies to add invisible “digital fingerprints” to AI-generated images, videos and audio, giving users a way to determine whether the content they’re seeing was made by a human — or a machine.

Written by Bay Area lawmakers, it will require AI companies to embed difficult-to-remove data known as “provenance” into their creations, allowing people to check a file’s origins through content verification tools.

The goal is to make the internet a little less of a Wild West.

“While AI has some benefits, we’ve seen AI content used for election misinformation for scams and abusive deepfakes,” state Sen. Josh Becker, D-Menlo Park, recently told KQED.

The concern comes as AI-generated political content has already begun making waves in The Golden State.

As previously reported by The Post, two California Democrats recently urged Congress to crack down on AI-generated campaign ads that could impersonate candidates or political organizations as the technology becomes increasingly sophisticated.

US Sen. Adam Schiff and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) are pushing a new crackdown that would stop fake candidate impersonations from hijacking federal campaigns.

The push came after California political campaigns embraced AI-generated ads.

This included Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton’s videos attacking Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Vice President Kamala Harris and Democratic nominee Xavier Becerra — as well as former Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt’s viral “Pratt Man” campaign video, which racked up millions of views with a Hollywood-style AI parody.

Schiff warned that AI-fueled political deception crosses party lines.

“AI-generated fraudulent advertising which uses the likeness or voices of candidates to misrepresent their positions, campaigns, or causes, or otherwise misrepresents a candidate’s point of view is not only wrong — it poses a serious threat to our democracy that should concern all Americans regardless of their party,” Schiff said.

While some fakes aim to fool the public, these West Coast campaign clips wore their digital DNA on their sleeves, utilizing Tinseltown-style animation and satire.

Still, as machine-made political content floods the internet, the line between fact and fiction is getting harder for voters to see.

Becker teamed up with Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, D-Oakland, and Rick Chavez Zbur, D-Los Angeles, on the law, aiming to give everyday internet users a fighting chance in a world where AI fakes can look eerily real.

Starting this Sunday, Aug. 9, users will be able to upload an image, video or audio file into a content verifier — such as one created by the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity — to check whether it was created by AI.

The law’s rollout won’t stop there. Come Jan. 1, 2027, Big Tech will have to give users a way to unmask AI-made content hiding in plain sight.

By 2028, phones and cameras manufactured in California will also be required to store provenance information at the moment an image is captured, essentially giving every photo its own digital birth certificate.

The law may have passed in 2024, but getting it off the runway took nearly three years as lawmakers tried to catch up with AI’s breakneck evolution.

California lawmakers also worked closely with officials in the European Union while developing the rules, with the law taking effect the same day as the EU’s new AI Act.

While the first phase of the law primarily targets AI companies, experts say the biggest impact could come when the rules reach social media platforms.

Stephen Sharp Queener, an academic researcher with Starling Lab, warned that the platform requirements could reshape how people consume information online.

If enforced, the rules “will no doubt have a larger effect on our information economy,” Queener wrote in a recent Substack post.

As AI-generated content floods the internet, California is betting that the best defense against digital deception is transparency — putting a tiny digital trail behind every synthetic creation.

Because in the age of AI, seeing isn’t always believing.

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