Our Agenda
The California Initiative for Technology and Democracy’s multifaceted agenda includes providing expertise and recommendations to Sacramento policymakers, education to voters and community leaders, and thought-leadership and unbiased analysis for the press and civil society.
Policy Recommendations in Sacramento
CITED is proud to sponsor a package of bills in the 2024 legislative session that is designed to fight back the new digital threats to our elections and democracy. These bills and all CITED policy recommendations are divorced from partisanship and ideology — safeguarding our democracy matters to every Californian regardless of party — and have been vetted by CITED leaders from tech, law, public policy, academia, civil rights, and civic engagement, as well as national leaders in the field.
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Provenance, Authenticity, and Watermarking Standards (AB 3211, Wicks)
Requires generative AI companies to embed digital provenance data within the digital media they create, so we know which images, video, and audio were digitally created, when they were created, and who they were created by. Modeled off of upcoming rules in the EU’s AI Act.
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Deepfake Labeling on Social Media (AB 2655, Berman)
Fights online election disinformation by requiring social media platforms to label election-related deepfakes posted by users, and ban the worst, most obvious cases close to elections, in a narrowly tailored way that respects the First Amendment.
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Deepfake-Free Campaigning Close to Elections (AB 2839, Pellerin)
Bans the use of deepfakes that deceive voters about candidates and elections officials in political mailers, robocalls, and TV ads, in a narrowly tailored way that respects the First Amendment.
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California Social Media Users’ Bill of Rights (ACR 219, Lowenthal)
Creates a blueprint to protect social media users via a set of first-in-the-nation digital “rights,” including the right to accurate information regarding elections and the right to user-friendly explanations about how platforms use algorithms and AI.
Voter Education and Community Engagement
CITED is embarking on a series of seven community forums, held in different regions around the California, each co-hosted with a civic engagement partner organization rooted in the region. These forums will serve to educate community leaders and trusted messengers about the threats facing the 2024 elections and how we must all be smarter, more skeptical consumers of information in 2024. CITED hopes to use these forums to heighten public awareness among all California voters but also to specifically inoculate communities of color, voters that prefer a language other than English, and others from targeted, racialized disinformation. We also hope to hear community reaction and feedback on potential solutions.
Thought-Leadership and Policy Analysis
CITED produced the policy white paper below, “Democracy On Edge in the Digital Age: Protecting Democracy in California in the Era of AI-Powered Disinformation and Unregulated Social Media,” in January 2024. It provides a statement of the problem and a landscape analysis of solutions, including ideas emerging from the European Union, the White House, Congress, and states around the country. It also discusses the limitations placed on possible solutions by the First Amendment, Section 230, and other policy and legal obstacles. “Democracy On Edge in the Digital Age” outlines the context in which California will operate if it has the courage to lead the fight nationally to find and implement solutions that can protect our democracy from the threats posed by AI, deepfakes, and disinformation.