It Should Be Illegal to Use AI to Deceive People

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE-AI, 1 Dec 2025

Caitlin Johnstone - TRANSCEND Media Service

Deepfake and AI artificial intelligence video editing technology. Face of a person in editor. Machine learning concept. Fraud picture swap.
Image via Adobe Stock

AI products that deceive people should be illegal in the same way fraud is illegal.

24 Nov 2025 – It should be against the law to use generative AI to deceive the public.

I’ve got absolutely no problem with outright government censorship in this case, and I say this as an aggressive and outspoken proponent of free speech. AI products which deceive people should be illegal in the same way fraud is illegal.

I want it to be illegal to knowingly circulate AI video footage and pass it off as real.

I want AI companies to be severely penalized if they don’t prevent people from using their products to generate fake videos that get passed off as real.

I want generative AI companies to be forced to place highly visible warnings across all AI-generated videos with wording that explicitly says they are AI-generated — not just a little watermark in the corner that can be cropped out.

I want AI companies to be harshly penalized if their chatbots encourage users to engage in harmful behavior, or if they tell users they are conscious, or if they psychologically manipulate users into forming emotional attachments to them.

I want it to be illegal for companies to use bots which tell people they are talking to a real human being.

I want it to be illegal for politicians to use AI deepfakes of their opponents saying outrageous things in their political campaigns, as we’ve been seeing more and more often lately.

Your right to extend your fist ends at my nose. These products threaten to erode the fabric of our society. They are attacking people’s ability to understand reality and sort out fact from fiction. They are driving people insane.

If fraud is illegal, than these abuses should be illegal. Fraud isn’t considered protected speech, because it hurts people and is detrimental to a functioning society. Generative AI deception shouldn’t be protected for precisely those same reasons.

Tech plutocrats should not be allowed to profit from sowing deception, confusion, and mental illness. The collective has the right to protect itself from harm from destructive individuals. The state is a gentler tool for this than guillotines. Governments should intervene to end these assaults on our ability to perceive and understand our world.

I really don’t care how much force needs to be used to rein this shit in. If people can’t perceive and understand reality clearly, then everything goes to hell. Nobody knows what to think, how to act, how to vote or how to live if they can’t determine what’s true or false. Bring these new technologies to heel by any means necessary. It’s about basic self-defense at this point.

And I don’t expect any of this to happen any time soon; the rich and powerful are way too excited about generative AI and what it can do for them, and they tend to get what they want. Trump is already drawing significant backlash over reported plans for an executive order which would ban states from regulating AI companies on their own.

So it looks like we’re getting these abusive technologies shoved down our throat in whatever way benefits the zillionaires and Zionists of the imperial power structure, whether we like it or not.

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Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper. Contact: admin@caitlinjohnstone.com

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