Williams questions officials on workforce bills and deepfake legislation

Just two more quick questions.

I passed a bill and the chair has a bill on AI's impact on the municipal workforce.

Just wondering if there was any traction on that for the state's workforce.

And then just a question for the member of parliament.

My bill that we're hearing today is to address unauthorized use of deepfakes.

So in addition to the privacy.

laws and Britain just wanted to know if you all have specific legislation around deep fakes.

And how you envision the cooperation with the international community, because you mentioned that.

And what does that look like for you?

Thank you so much for your question.

We know that female elected representatives are 33 times more likely to be targeted by sexual deepfakes than men.

The whole issue around sexualized deepfakes is deeply gendered, and I think it's very important that we acknowledge that.

Because what it does is it drives women from the public space.

We know that women are less likely to talk about politics online than men are.

And that is because they become a target as soon as they raise their heads in this place, which is not social.

That is why taking action on this is so important and to be commended in terms of looking at this.

But when we're looking at these deep fakes, it needs to be for all of our citizens because it's not just about protecting those of us who have the honour of being elected.

It is about co-workers who may be targeted because

they didn't smile at the right time or your last date who wouldn't go on a second date with you or teachers who are being targeted by their male students.

All of these people need protection.

That's why in the UK we have taken steps to make sure that there is the criminalization of the creation of non-consensual sexual deepfakes.

But my view is that we need to go further than just the sexualized deepfakes because any act could be harmful to women.

The removal of a woman's hijab.

Through AI could put that woman in harm's way, but there's nothing sexualized about it.

And so we have to look at this as an issue, as I said, of consent.

And that is where data and privacy is so, so important.

And that's where I think there could be international agreement.

We can see, as you said, that things are moving forward within the EU space.

Really, though, what we need is for tech companies to be safe by design.

And every single country has those rules.

We should be looking at product regulation just as we do in the offline sphere.

At the end of the day, we have cars that have seatbelts and they have airbags.

And that's because we expect them to be safe by design.

It is not too much to expect that of the tech products that we use today.

On the question about the state workforce, I wish Senator Gonzalez could have heard that because she wrote the Loading Act, which helps to protect the state workforce.

And I think there's an update to it pending before the governor, which leads me to you asking about deep fakes as well.

There's a bill from Senator Granardis and I pending before the governor on that.

Senator Gonzalez also mentioned chatbots to protect kids.

There's a bill pending before the governor.

So I should have also added on ways you can help out is we are really happy to be here and advocate for the legislation you are putting forward and invite you, if you agree with some that's pending before the governor, to be a partner in pushing that as well.

Yeah, we have a number of deepfake bills, and we passed actually a number of, a couple of my bills became law with respect to deepfakes, with respect to elections.

One of the new bills that just came out was just very recently, I discovered an artist that I fell in love with on Apple Music, and I downloaded all her music.

I've been listening to her music for a while.

I actually went to go look for her a couple of days ago to follow her to go to a concert or something like that, found out.

It's not a person.

So there's no law, there's no regulation at all for these platforms to tell you whether or not you're listening to a real person or not.

Right?

So, you know, the bill, so one of the things that we have to do is figure out what that looks like moving forward.

So we're going to need your help on that.

That's something that we're going to really need your help on.

Yeah, ask them specifically a question about it.

And it was very fluffy.

But I literally asked a question about that to the companies.

Thank you all.

Thank you.