Andrew Powell
The Senate Committee on Commerce and Tourism unanimously advanced a bill aiming to enhance transparency related to digital content, especially in regard to political candidates and political campaigns.
Zephyrhills Republican Sen. Danny Burgess filed the bill (SB 702). During the committee stop, Burgess introduced an amendment that would narrow the scope of the bill, allowing social media platforms to design a way to identify pictures, videos and audio that have been modified either in part or wholly by artificial intelligence and provide that information to the public.
The amendment also changed enforcement aspects of the bill, stipulating that this could only happen through the Attorney General’s Office.
Burgess explained that the bill would define “provenance data,” also referred to as content credentials, to help people better understand if what they’re saying or hearing is real, or if it was created or modified using generative AI tools.
“Content credentials that display underlying provenance (data) work a lot like a nutrition label for digital content,” Burgess said. “This bill has certainly been a challenge for me in terms of wrapping my arms around the ideas that AI bring to the table. There’s a lot of great benefits for it, no doubt about it. However, there are some things that we just need to make sure that we’re providing information to the public that way they can make their own determinations.”
Sarasota Republican Sen. Joe Gruters asked what exactly the bill is aiming to fix.
In response, Burgess said that the bill would simply give the public information about what they see on social media, and whether it has been modified, giving them an opportunity to make up their own minds about content they see.
“We see a lot of, especially lately, on social media that deal with candidates or political campaigns, and they illustrate the need for providing information on whether or not something was edited,” Burgess said. “We see videos of President (Donald) Trump getting into a physical altercation with somebody else, that didn’t happen. And I use that as an example because it’s something that we see all the time.”
Separate from the requirements for political campaigns and candidates, the bill would create a pilot program that would see if more accurate information could be provided and if provenance data could be fully implemented — the pilot program would sunset in 2027 and would need to provide a report to the Legislature and the Governor on whether this would be possible.
Burgess added that he has met with stakeholders to ensure that there is as little overreach as possible and that no unintended consequences emerge due to the bill’s implementation.
“I’m very confident that we’re moving in the right direction, and I’m also very confident that the policy is needed, the way we do it, we wanna make sure that we’re not creating unintended consequences, second- and third-order effects,” Burgess said. “We’ve been working with stakeholders in social media companies … broadband providers, Microsoft, other entities like that … to ensure … we’re not overreaching.”
During the bill’s debate, Orlando Democratic Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith said he was going to support the bill’s advancement but aired concerns over the infrastructure not yet existing to implement provenance data without issues.
“I’m going to support your bill today. I think it’s a good idea, we need to move in this direction because there’s so much fake stuff that’s out there on social media, there needs to be some regulation here,” Smith said.
“I do think the bill is moving really fast … it’s very ambitious. It wants to do all these things, but I hear the concerns that maybe we’re not ready for all of those things. … We need to be able to get there. I also have questions about how easily it could be circumvented if it’s not done properly.”
Despite concerns, the committee passed the measure unanimously and it will now go to the Senate Appropriations Committee on Transportation, Tourism, and Economic Development.
