Testimony In Opposition to TN House Bill 1513, “Transparency for Deepfakes in Political Advertising Act.”
Testimony from:
Chris McIsaac, Governance Fellow, R Street Institute
In Opposition to House Bill 1513, “Transparency for Deepfakes in Political Advertising Act.”
February 17, 2026
Elections and Campaign Finance Subcommittee
Chairman Rudd and members of the committee:
My name is Chris McIsaac, and I conduct research on election reform for the R Street Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization. Our mission is to engage in policy research and outreach to promote free markets and limited, effective government across a variety of policy areas, including the intersection of artificial intelligence and election policy. This is why House Bill 1513 is of particular interest.
Recent advances in artificial intelligence are impacting all aspects of modern life, including the way elections are administered and campaigns are run.[1] These advances have raised fears that technology will be used to deceive voters at scale and erode trust in elections, though the actual impacts on recent elections were minimal.[2] HB 1513 seeks to mitigate these potential harms by requiring disclosure labels when “deepfakes” are used for deceptive purposes in political campaign advertisements and establishing criminal and civil penalties for violations. While well-intentioned, HB 1513 is problematic because it places a burden on political speech, expands the government’s role in mediating political disputes that should be resolved by campaigns, and provides voters with a false sense of security around the authenticity of political information.
At their core, disclosure requirements place a burden on free speech. While the U.S. Supreme Court has accepted their use in the context of certain campaign advertisements—namely, campaign finance—the disclosure requirements in HB 1513 are fundamentally different. Here, the disclosure is related to the substance of the advertisement itself, not just the financial backers. [3] By putting forward a new content-based restriction on speech, HB 1513 sets Tennessee up for a possible legal challenge on First Amendment grounds.
The bill also expands the government’s role in resolving disputes between campaigns. Specifically, HB 1513 allows candidates to challenge in court whether a campaign advertisement violated the deepfake disclosure requirement. This means the judiciary will need to make technical determinations around whether an image, video, or audio was manipulated using “artificial intelligence” and judgment calls over whether the altered communication “realistically portrays” something that did not occur. Neither of these factors are necessarily obvious, especially in the context of a political campaign. Rather than placing additional pressure on the court system to quickly rule on complex subjects related to technology and political speech during fast moving political campaigns, a far simpler remedy is for politicians and their supporters to correct the record when their opponents lie and let the public decide what they believe.
Finally, even under a scenario where campaigns largely comply with the requirements of HB 1513, there could be unintended consequences that elevate the salience of false information.[4] For example, the theory behind requiring a disclosure is that it provides a signal to the public that the content should be viewed with a certain level of skepticism because it’s been manipulated in some fashion. If that mindset takes root, the reverse also holds that content without the disclosure can be trusted because it has not been manipulated. However, the vast majority of political speech will remain beyond the reach of any federal or state regulation, which sets the stage for truly false and unlabeled information—generated with or without AI— to gain additional traction. A better approach is for the government to let the public engage in free speech without imposing labeling requirements that could be counterproductive.
Overall, the push toward protecting the public from exposure to deepfakes in political advertising through greater transparency is well meaning, but also a concerning expansion of the government’s role in regulating political speech. For these reasons, we urge the committee to reject HB 1513.
Thank you for your time,
Chris McIsaac
Fellow, Governance
R Street Institute
cmcisaac@rstreet.org
[1] Chris McIsaac, “Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Elections,” R Street Policy Study No. 304, June 2024. https://www.rstreet.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/FINAL-r-street-policy-study-no-304.pdf
[2] Chris McIsaac, “AI and the 2024 Election Part II: Many Uses and Minor Impacts,” R Street Institute, January 14, 2025. https://www.rstreet.org/commentary/ai-and-the-2024-election-part-iii-many-uses-and-minor-impacts/
[3] “Campaign Finance Law: Disclosure and Disclaimer Requirements for Political Campaign Advertising,” Congressional Research Service, Dec. 30, 2019. https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11398
[4] Scott Babwah Brennen et al., “In Disclaimers We Trust: The Effectiveness of State- Required AI Disclaimers in Political Ads,” NYU Center on Technology Policy, October 8, 2024. https://techpolicynyu.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/CTP_In-Disclaimers-we-Trust_final.pdf