45 States Acted on Deepfakes. Massachusetts Went Home.

Full Episode Transcript

There's a candidate for governor in Massachusetts named Michael Minogue. And right now, there's a video of him out there — his exact voice, his face — saying something he never said. A super PAC made it. It's a deepfake. And in Massachusetts, there's no law that clearly stops it.

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If you've ever watched a campaign ad and trusted

If you've ever watched a campaign ad and trusted your own eyes, this story is about you. Here's the situation. Lawmakers on Beacon Hill went home for the session without passing rules on election deepfakes — fake videos and audio built by artificial intelligence to look and sound real. Meanwhile, according to legislative trackers, at least forty-five states have passed some kind of deepfake law. Massachusetts stayed on the sidelines. So what actually happens if a fake video of a candidate spreads the weekend before you vote?

Start with Minogue. A voter watching that clip has no easy way to know it's synthetic. The voice matches. The face matches. Nothing on screen tells you a machine built it. That's the core problem — the technology to fake a person is now free and simple to use. It moved faster than any statehouse could write a bill. For you, that means the next political video in your feed might be showing you something that never happened.

Now look at what other states did. Reporting from The Boston Globe notes that Maryland bans deceptive election deepfakes all year round. Colorado and Utah took a softer path. They don't ban the video — they require a hidden label in the file itself, marking it as A.I.-made. Massachusetts looked at those models and didn't adopt them. That's a choice, not an accident.

To be fair, the state didn't do nothing. In 2024, Massachusetts made it a crime to create fake intimate images of someone without consent. But election fakes? Those sit in a gray zone. No clear protection. And that gray zone has consequences. Consider the numbers on A.I.-generated child abuse material. Reports jumped more than thirteen times over between 2023 and 2024. Early figures for the next year point to over a million reports. That's what happens when the tools race ahead and the rules trail behind.

The Bottom Line

There's a real tension here, though. When California passed a broad election deepfake law, a federal judge struck it down. The court said it swept too wide and picked winners based on the message. That's why the quiet metadata label — the hidden tag in the file — tends to survive court challenges. It informs you instead of silencing anyone.

And that's the part most people miss. This isn't really a fight about censorship. It's a fight about verification. The question was never "should we ban fakes." It's "can you prove what's real before you vote." Massachusetts left that question unanswered.

So here's where we land. A candidate in Massachusetts has a fake video of himself circulating, and the state has no clear law to stop it. Forty-five states acted on deepfakes. Massachusetts adjourned. Other states either banned election fakes or forced them to carry a hidden label — Massachusetts did neither. Whether you're building a fraud case or just deciding who to vote for, the burden of spotting the fake now falls on you. The written version goes deeper — link's below.

45 States Acted on Deepfakes. Massachusetts Went Home.