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Law / United States / Washington

Synthetic media in electioneering communications

RCW 29B.35.010 (formerly RCW 42.62.020)

In force since .

An AI transparency rule binding public and private bodies.

Criminal exposure
No
Private right of action
Yes
Obligation class
Disclosure, Content labelling
Audit expectation
none
Setting the rule reaches
Elections

What it requires

  • If your synthetic media alters a candidate's appearance, action, or speech in an electioneering communication, include a conspicuous disclosure stating the media has been manipulated, in the form and duration this statute specifies for visual and audio media, or the sponsor is exposed to injunctive relief and a damages action.
  • A medium that disseminates such a communication is not itself liable unless it removes the required disclosure or itself changes the content so that it becomes synthetic media.

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

In the frameworks

NIST AI RMF
  • MEASURE 2.8Risks associated with transparency and accountability – as identified in the MAP function – are examined and documented.
NIST AI 600-1
OWASP Agentic Top 10
  • ASI09Human-Agent Trust Exploitation
MIT mitigations Draft
  • 2.4Content Safety Controls
  • 4.1System Documentation
  • 4.2Risk Disclosure
  • 4.6User Rights & Recourse
FINOS AIGF
ETSI EN 304 223
  • 5.1.3-2Threats developers cannot resolve are passed to operators and on to end-users.
  • 5.3.1-1Users told where and how their data is used, accessed and stored, with developers informing operators.
  • 5.3.1-2.1That guidance covers proper use, limits and likely failure modes.

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

No agency enforces the chapter: an altered candidate enforces it by seeking injunctive relief or suing the sponsor for damages, and the Public Disclosure Commission holds rule-making authority only.

Settledness

Public Disclosure Commission rule WAC 390-18-035, effective , provides that a synthetic media disclosure statement is in addition to the disclaimers required by chapter 29B.30 RCW and Title 390 RCW and cannot replace them.

As of
Open questions
  • Who is the "sponsor" of an electioneering communication under RCW 29B.35.010(3), a term chapter 29B.35 RCW does not define, when the synthetic media was generated by an AI tool and published by a third party?
  • Does a provider of an interactive computer service that generates altered content for a user "change the content" of an electioneering communication within RCW 29B.35.020(2)(b), so that it can be held liable as a medium?
  • Does a manipulation disclosure that satisfies RCW 29B.35.010(4) preserve the affirmative defense when the communication omits a disclaimer that chapter 29B.30 RCW requires, given that WAC 390-18-035 says the two statements are cumulative?

What it makes you log

Logging duty

The statute gives a candidate injunctive relief and a damages action against the sponsor of synthetic media in an electioneering communication, with an affirmative defense for a conspicuous manipulation disclosure. It states no duty for anyone to create, keep, or later produce a log or record of a communication's use of synthetic media.

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

A candidate whose appearance, action, or speech is altered through synthetic media, an image, audio recording, or video recording intentionally manipulated with generative adversarial network techniques or other digital technology to create a realistic but false depiction, in an electioneering communication may seek injunctive relief and may bring a civil action for general or special damages against the sponsor.

It is an affirmative defense that the communication carries a conspicuous disclosure stating the media has been manipulated, in a form and duration the statute specifies for visual and audio media respectively. A medium disseminating the communication is generally not liable, except where it strips the required disclosure or itself alters content into synthetic media.

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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