Law / United States / 
Rhode Island
Deceptive and Fraudulent Synthetic Media in Election Communications
R.I. Gen. Laws §§ 17-30-1 to 17-30-4
In force since .
An AI transparency rule binding private bodies.
- Criminal exposure
- No
- Private right of action
- Yes
- How the hook was established
- express
- What makes it apply
- Place of effect
- Obligation class
- Disclosure, Prohibition
- Audit expectation
- none
- Setting the rule reaches
- Elections
What it requires
- Do not distribute synthetic media of a candidate's appearance, action, or speech within ninety days of an election if you know or should know it is deceptive and fraudulent, unless it carries a disclosure that it was manipulated or generated by artificial intelligence, in the size and timing this chapter specifies.
- A depicted candidate may seek an injunction and sue for damages plus attorney's fees; the burden is clear and convincing evidence.
- Broadcasters, qualifying news publications that flag the media as inaccurate, satire and parody, and interactive computer services are exempt from this chapter.
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.
Who enforces it
Enforcement body
Private plaintiffs: a candidate depicted in the synthetic media may seek injunctive or other equitable relief and may sue for general or special damages. The chapter names no public enforcer.
Settledness
- As of
- Open questions
- Does a disclosure stating that "the image has been manipulated or generated by artificial intelligence" satisfy section 17-30-1(d)(1) for an audio recording or a video, where the subsection names only "the image"?
- Does the ninety-day period in section 17-30-1(c) run from any election at which "a candidate for elective office" appears on a ballot, or only from an election in which the depicted candidate appears on the ballot?
What it makes you log
Logging duty
The chapter conditions liability on whether a disclosure was carried on the synthetic media itself rather than on any kept record, and states no duty to log a dissemination or the disclosure.
- Kind
- None
- As of
What this law does
Effective , section 17-30-1 bars a candidate, campaign committee, party committee, or independent-expenditure person or entity from distributing, within ninety days of an election, "synthetic media" that realistically but falsely depicts a candidate's appearance, action, or speech in a way that creates a fundamentally different impression than the real, unaltered version, where the distributor knows or should know it is deceptive.
The prohibition does not apply if the media carries a disclosure that it was manipulated or generated by artificial intelligence, sized and timed as the statute specifies for visual and audio media. A depicted candidate may seek injunctive relief and sue for general or special damages plus attorney's fees, proven by clear and convincing evidence. Broadcasters, news publications that label the media as inaccurate, satire and parody, and interactive computer services are exempted.
When LexLint raises it
When your app profile says your app generates images with AI, generates video with AI, generates audio with AI or sends automated outreach.
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