Law / United States / 
Maryland
SB 141 / Ch. 444 (2026), Election Deepfake Prohibition
Md. Code Ann., Elec. Law §16-905
In force since .
An AI prohibited practices rule binding public and private bodies.
- Obligation class
- Prohibition
- Audit expectation
- none
- Setting the rule reaches
- Elections
What it requires
- Do not knowingly, or with reckless disregard, create, use, or disseminate a deepfake, meaning AI-generated or other digitally manipulated media an ordinary person would conclude is an authentic depiction, with intent to impede or influence a voter's decision, misrepresent voter-registration or election facts, or induce or deter a ballot-question petition signature, where the act results or is intended to result in harm to a voter or petition.
- Satire or parody is exempt.
- A broadcaster, website, or periodical is exempt for content that carries a clear and conspicuous disclosure that it may contain deceptive audio or visual media.
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
- GAI-RISK-08Information Integrity
- GAI-RISK-11Obscene, Degrading, and/or Abusive Content
- MIT mitigations Draft
- FINOS AIGF
- AIR-PREV-005System Acceptance Testing
- ETSI EN 304 223
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
Criminal exposure note
Misdemeanor, punishable by a fine not exceeding $5,000 or imprisonment not exceeding 5 years, or both.
What it makes you log
Logging duty
Section 16-905 prohibits creating, using, or disseminating an election deepfake with intent to deceive a voter, and it exempts a broadcaster, website, or periodical that carries a clear and conspicuous disclosure. Neither the prohibition nor the disclosure exemption requires anyone to log, record, or otherwise document a deepfake or a disclosure. A companion provision of the same chapter, Election Law Section 2-110, gives the State Administrator power to subpoena records related to the dissemination of election misinformation, but that power sits in a different section and is not part of what this provision itself states.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
Effective , a person may not knowingly or with reckless disregard create, use, or disseminate a deepfake, defined as an image, audio recording, or video recording intentionally created or manipulated with generative artificial intelligence or other digital technology to produce a realistic but false depiction an ordinary person would conclude is authentic, where the person intends the deepfake to impede or influence a voter's decision, misrepresent voter-registration or election facts, or induce or deter a ballot-question petition signature, and the act results in or is intended to result in harm to a voter or petition.
The prohibition exempts satire or parody and exempts a broadcaster, website, or periodical that carries a clear and conspicuous disclosure that content may be deceptive. A violation is a misdemeanor.
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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