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Law / United States / Delaware

House Bill 316 (2024), use of deep fake technology to influence an election

Del. Code Ann. tit. 15, § 5145

In force since .

An AI transparency rule binding public and private bodies.

How the hook was established
express
What makes it apply
Place of effect
Obligation class
Prohibition, Content labelling
Audit expectation
none
Setting the rule reaches
Elections

What it requires

  • Do not distribute, or agree to distribute, a deep fake depicting a candidate or political party within 90 days of an election without the depicted individual's consent, if you know or reasonably should know the item is a deep fake.
  • Include a clear, specified disclosure that the image, audio, or video has been altered or artificially generated to rely on the statute's safe harbor.
  • The prohibition does not apply to bona fide news coverage, or to satire or parody.

These lines are LexLint's reading of the law's text.

In the frameworks

NIST AI RMF
  • MAP 3.3Targeted application scope is specified and documented based on the system’s capability, established context, and AI system categorization.
NIST AI 600-1
MIT mitigations Draft
  • 1.5Safety Decision Frameworks
  • 3.3Access Management
FINOS AIGF
ETSI EN 304 223
  • 5.1.2-1Business need and security risks written down and assessed before deciding to build an AI system.
  • 5.1.4-5End-users told which uses of the system are prohibited.

Our reading of where this law's duties sit in each framework. It never says that running a control meets the law. How we read a framework against the law

Identifiers refer to ETSI EN 304 223 V2.1.1 (2025-12), © ETSI 2025, all rights reserved. ETSI owns the standard; no ETSI text (titles or sentences) is reproduced here. The standard is free to download from ETSI.

If you get it wrong

Criminal exposureYes

Private right of actionYes

Criminal exposure note

A violation is a class B misdemeanor, elevated to a class A misdemeanor if committed with intent to cause violence or bodily harm, or if committed within 5 years of a prior conviction under this section.

Who enforces it

Enforcement body

Private enforcement by a depicted candidate in the Delaware Court of Chancery; also prosecutable as a misdemeanor

Settledness

As of
Open questions
  • What makes audio or visual media "materially-deceptive" in 15 Del. C. section 5145(d)(1), (d)(3) and (d)(4), given that subsection (a) defines "deep fake" and "synthetic media" but not that phrase?
  • Must the disclosure in section 5145(c)(1) use the exact words "This (image/video/audio) has been altered or artificially generated.", or may a distributor's own wording of the same message qualify?

What it makes you log

Logging duty

Section 5145 prohibits distributing a deep fake depicting a candidate or political party within 90 days of an election. It imposes no duty to create, keep, or produce a log or record of any kind; the on-screen or spoken disclosure that exempts a distributor from liability is a defense, not a record-keeping requirement.

Kind
None
As of

What this law does

Drafted with AI

Drafted with AI from the cited sources under the direction of UnGovr staff. UnGovr holds editorial responsibility for this page. How this site is made

Research summary

Legal information, not legal advice. This is LexLint's own research summary of a public legal source, and it creates no attorney-client relationship. For decisions that matter, consult qualified counsel in the relevant jurisdiction. About LexLint

House Bill 316 added this Title 15 provision, approved . It makes it unlawful for a person to distribute, or contract to distribute, a deep fake depicting a candidate or political party within 90 days of an election, without the depicted individual's consent, if the person knows or reasonably should know the item is a deep fake.

Distribution is not a violation if the synthetic media carries a specified on-screen or spoken disclosure that it has been altered or artificially generated, or if it falls within the exceptions for a bona fide newscast, a news website or periodical that flags the media as inaccurate, or satire or parody; a further exception for a paid broadcaster meeting good-faith verification conditions was itself repealed by its own one-year sunset clause and no longer appears in the current code.

A depicted candidate may bring an expedited action for injunctive relief, damages, and attorney's fees in the Court of Chancery. A violation is a class B misdemeanor, elevated to a class A misdemeanor if committed with intent to cause violence or bodily harm, or on a repeat violation within 5 years.

When LexLint raises it

When your app profile says your app generates audio with AI, generates images with AI or generates video with AI.

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