The state Senate Study committee on Artificial Intelligence on Tuesday recommended a renewed legislative push regarding data privacy and limiting the use of deepfakes.
The chair of the study committee, Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell, said lawmakers want to regulate data security without stifling innovation of the emerging technology.
“We have a great opportunity to embrace AI as a state government — to become more efficient, to become better — but doing that in a way that we all feel comfortable,” Albers said.
One of the committee’s recommendations is similar to last session’s House Bill 986, which aimed to regulate the use of AI-generated likenesses of opponents in political campaign ads. The bill passed the House but stalled in the Senate.
The legislation would have made it a felony to broadcast or publish deceptive information within 90 days of an election with the intention to influence a candidate’s chance of being elected, causing confusion about the election or influencing the results.
“As deepfakes have become increasingly more real, what was done in the past was not quite what it is today,” Albers said. “We want to make sure that that’s not interfering with elections. It’s doing something awful to an individual.”
Last session, supporters of the bill saw it as a way to protect voters from deceptive campaign ads, while opponents said it could limit free speech.
The study committee recommended legislation on data privacy similar to a bill that missed the finish line last year, Senate Bill 473, which sought data protection for Georgia consumers. Albers said the goal of such legislation would be to allow individuals to control the use of their online data.
“You don’t want folks to just take folks’ information and broadly sell it and utilize it,” he said.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia criticized the legislation for failing to shield consumers while protecting Big Tech companies.
The panel’s 185-page report also proposed focus areas, such as how artificial intelligence will be used in health care, public safety, education and agricultural sectors in the state, and a statewide definition of what artificial intelligence is.
The quickly advancing technology makes developing policy a moving target, and striking a balance between regulation and incentivizing innovation could be challenging.
“As we’ve learned, it literally touches every Georgian every day,” said Sen. Max Burns, R-Sylvania. “And so it is essential that we craft policy that protects Georgians but promotes AI and promotes its effective and appropriate use.”
Georgia’s legislative session starts in January.
What is AI?
“An engineered or machine-based system that emulates the capability of a person to receive audio, visual, text or any other form of information and use the information received to emulate a human cognitive process, including, but not limited to, learning, generalizing, reasoning, planning, predicting, acting or communicating; provided, however, that artificial intelligence systems may vary in the forms of information they can receive and in the human cognitive processes they can emulate.”
Source: Georgia Senate Study committee on Artificial Intelligence, final report
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