Law / United States / 
California
AB 730, as extended by AB 972, election deepfake disclosure law
A citation is an address, not a summary. The first part names the law; what follows narrows it to the exact section, article or paragraph.
What follows is LexLint's own research summary of this law, not legal advice.
In force since 1 January 2020.
An AI transparency rule binding public and private bodies.
As of 14 August 2026.
What it requires
- Disclose that the media has been manipulated when you distribute materially deceptive audio or visual election media depicting a candidate within 60 days of an election
- The prohibition reaches distribution with actual malice, intending to injure the candidate's reputation or deceive a voter
- This statute was not a party to the litigation that reached AB 2839 and AB 2655, and it runs to 2027-01-01
If you get it wrong
Criminal exposureNo
Private right of actionYes
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
No regulator; enforced only by the candidate depicted, through a private civil action of the candidate's own.
What it reaches
Obligation class
Content labelling, Prohibition
What it makes you log
Logging duty
The section prohibits distributing certain deceptive election media unless the distributor discloses the manipulation, and arms the depicted candidate with a private action. It states no duty to create, keep, or produce on demand any record of the distribution or the disclosure.
- Kind
- None
- As of
- 21 September 2026
Who checks it
Audit expectation
none
What this law does
Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page.
Prohibits, with actual malice, distributing materially deceptive audio or visual election media depicting a candidate within 60 days of an election, intending to injure the candidate's reputation or deceive a voter, unless the distributor discloses that the media has been manipulated. AB 972 extended the original 1 January 2023 sunset to 1 January 2027, confirmed against FindLaw's codified-statute history note showing the section added by Stats. 2019, c. 493 (AB 730) and amended by Stats.
2022, c. 745 (AB 972), so the disclosure-exemption structure remains in force. This statute was not a party to the litigation that enjoined AB 2839 or struck down AB 2655. The 1 January 2020 effective date follows the standard non-urgency operative date for a bill approved 3 October 2019, and is independently corroborated by multiple contemporaneous legal-press sources (Davis Wright Tremaine, Akin Gump) describing AB 730 as having taken effect January 1, 2020.
When LexLint raises it
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Read the law
Every line above is drawn from the primary source linked here, read on the date shown. This is a research summary, not legal advice.