The Ninth Circuit's August 4 decision in Amazon.com Services, LLC v. Perplexity AI, Inc. draws one of the first appellate lines around agentic AI and computer access law.

The immediate holding is narrower than the headlines make it sound. The court vacated a preliminary injunction that had blocked Perplexity's AI-enabled browser assistant from interacting with Amazon on users' behalf. The panel said Amazon was unlikely to succeed, on the record before it, in showing that Perplexity itself "accessed" Amazon's computers within the meaning of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and California's parallel statute.

That is not a general license for AI agents to operate on third-party platforms. The opinion instead suggests that, for purposes of the CFAA's access element, some user-directed AI activity may be treated as the customer's use of a tool rather than the tool provider's own entry into a platform's computers.

What the Fight Was About

Amazon's theory was straightforward. Perplexity's Assistant, an optional feature in its Comet browser, could use a customer's Amazon session to browse and carry out tasks on the user's behalf. Amazon said Perplexity lacked permission for that activity under the CFAA and California's Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act. Central to the dispute was Perplexity's decision not to use a user-agent string that would identify the Assistant and allow Amazon to block it.

The district court had granted Amazon a preliminary injunction in March. The Ninth Circuit vacated that order and sent the case back.

The key question was easy to state and harder to answer: when a user tells an AI agent to act on a website, who is doing the "accessing" for computer fraud purposes?

Why the Ninth Circuit Matters

The Ninth Circuit answered that question narrowly, based on the technology and record before it.

The panel concluded that the user accessed Amazon's computers with the Assistant's help. Perplexity's servers received browser screenshots and sent instructions back to the Assistant, but did not directly communicate with Amazon's servers. Those facts did not show that Perplexity itself had gained entry to Amazon's systems, the court reasoned.

That reasoning matters because Amazon's CFAA claim required proof that Perplexity accessed a protected computer. The panel did not reach authorization or the statute's remaining elements, including its loss requirement.

The same user-versus-provider question is likely to arise again as AI agents move from answering questions to logging in, navigating sites, filling forms, pulling account data, and initiating transactions.

This Is Bigger Than One Shopping Dispute

Amazon v. Perplexity does not resolve agentic AI access disputes. It shows courts beginning to decide how older computer access laws apply when software takes multiple steps at a user's direction rather than waiting for each click.

That problem is not limited to e-commerce. The same legal tension can show up in:

• enterprise automation tools that log into third-party services on behalf of employees;
• consumer AI assistants that navigate password-protected sites;
• browser-based agents that compare products, prices, or terms across platforms;
• internal legal and compliance tools that automate retrieval from external systems; and
• research workflows that rely on user-authorized scraping or session-based access.

The Knight First Amendment Institute, joined by the ACLU and ACLU of Northern California, raised another concern in an amicus brief: reading the CFAA too broadly could chill journalism and public-interest research that depends on automated tools operating with user-provided access.

The argument does not immunize researchers or AI vendors, but it shows why the stakes extend beyond this dispute.

What Companies Should Take from It

The safest reading is not "AI agents are fine now." It is that the technical path matters: who directs the tool, which computers communicate, where data goes, and how much control the provider exercises. Although user direction was important to the panel's access analysis, the opinion did not decide whether a user's permission would defeat a platform's authorization argument.

For companies building agentic products, a few practical questions now look more important:

• Is the agent acting with clear, documented user authorization?
• Does the product rely on the user's own credentials and permissions, or does it bypass technical controls?
• What signals does the system send to the platform about the nature of the interaction?
• Does the workflow create separate data-use, contract, privacy, or state-law risk even if the CFAA theory weakens?
• How much of the task is user-directed versus autonomously optimized by the vendor?

For platforms, the decision shows the difficulty of a CFAA claim when the record depicts the user, rather than the tool provider, as entering the platform's systems. Contract claims, technical controls, API design, bot-detection systems, privacy arguments, and data-use restrictions may still matter.

Why Clearon Readers Should Care

This case sits at the intersection of AI product design, litigation risk, and platform governance.

Agentic AI marketing often assumes that if a user can do something, an AI agent can do it without changing the legal analysis. The Ninth Circuit did not endorse that broad claim. It instead held that Amazon was unlikely, on the current record, to prove that Perplexity was the party that accessed its computers.

That is an important early signal for legal teams reviewing AI assistants that operate inside customer accounts or interact with third-party services.

Future disputes are therefore likely to turn on details: credentials, disclosure, technical barriers, autonomy, data handling, system architecture, and the relationship among the user, vendor, and platform.

Bottom Line

Amazon v. Perplexity is one of the first appellate opinions to test how the CFAA applies to agentic AI.

The Ninth Circuit did not give AI agents blanket immunity. At the preliminary-injunction stage and on the record before it, the court held that Amazon was unlikely to show that Perplexity "accessed" Amazon's systems when the user accessed them with the Assistant's help.

That is a meaningful development for AI companies, platforms, and in-house legal teams.

The next question is whether other courts follow the same user-versus-tool framing, or whether different facts push them toward a narrower view of what agentic systems can do inside someone else's digital environment.

Sources and Related Clearon Coverage

• Ninth Circuit opinion in Amazon.com Services, LLC v. Perplexity AI, Inc.
• Knight First Amendment Institute case page
• Ropes & Gray analysis via RopesDataPhiles
• Cooley summary of the Ninth Circuit ruling
• Reuters report on the dispute and oral-argument framing

California's AI Transparency Act is in force, but a lot of quick summaries still flatten it into something simpler than it is.

That is a problem because the law matters, and it arrives in stages.

If a company walks away with "California now requires AI labels," it will miss the more useful question: which entities have duties now, which entities pick them up later, and what technical or workflow evidence should already exist before anyone starts asking more exacting compliance questions.

That is the frame worth using now.

The Statute Is Live, But Not All At Once

The original California AI Transparency Act came from SB 942. AB 853 amended it before the law took effect and expanded the structure.

The result is not one date with one compliance moment.

The staged dates matter:

• covered-provider duties and the chapter's general enforcement provisions became operative on August 2, 2026;
• large-online-platform and GenAI-hosting-platform duties become operative on January 1, 2027; and
• capture-device-manufacturer duties become operative on January 1, 2028, for covered devices first produced for sale in California on or after that date.

Some companies are already inside the law. Others should be using the current window to prepare instead of treating the statute as a future issue.

Who Is Covered Right Now

The present-tense obligations fall first on a covered provider.

California defines that term to reach a person that creates, codes, or otherwise produces a generative AI system with more than 1,000,000 monthly visitors or users that is publicly accessible in California.

That threshold matters because it narrows the immediate field. Not every company using generative AI is covered today. Not every enterprise deploying internal tools is covered today either.

But for the companies that do clear that threshold, this is not mainly a statement of transparency values. It is a set of tooling and content-handling duties.

The chapter also excludes products, services, internet websites, and applications that provide exclusively non-user-generated video game, television, streaming, movie, or interactive experiences. That carveout matters when companies try to analogize every media product into the statute.

What Covered Providers Have To Do

The first major duty is an AI detection tool.

The law requires a covered provider to make available, at no cost, an AI detection tool that allows users to assess whether image, video, audio, or combined content was created or altered by that provider's GenAI system. The tool must output any system provenance data detected in the content, must not output detected personal provenance data, must accept an upload or URL, and must support an API. It must be publicly accessible, although reasonable access limits are permitted to address demonstrable risks to the system's security or integrity. Covered providers must also collect efficacy feedback and comply with restrictions on collecting or retaining user information, submitted content, and personal provenance data.

That is already a substantial operational requirement. This is not just a disclosure sentence in a terms-of-use page.

The second major duty is disclosure.

Covered providers must offer users the option to include a manifest disclosure in image, video, audio, or combined content created or altered by their GenAI systems. That disclosure must identify the content as AI-generated, be clear and conspicuous, and be permanent or extraordinarily difficult to remove to the extent technically feasible. Providers must also include a latent disclosure in AI-generated covered media created by their systems. To the extent technically feasible and reasonable, that disclosure must convey the provider name, system name and version, creation or alteration date and time, and a unique identifier, either directly or through a permanent website link. It must also be detectable by the provider's detection tool, consistent with widely accepted industry standards, and permanent or extraordinarily difficult to remove to the extent technically feasible.

The law also pushes into licensing relationships. If a covered provider licenses its system to a third party, the provider must require by contract that the licensee preserve the system's latent-disclosure capability. If the provider knows the licensee modified the system so that capability no longer exists, the provider must revoke the license within 96 hours. A licensee must stop using the system after a revocation under that provision.

That piece is easy to miss, but it matters. California is not only regulating outputs. It is also reaching contractual controls and downstream system integrity.

What AB 853 Changed

AB 853 made this a broader statute than the original SB 942 version many people still have in mind.

Beginning January 1, 2027, qualifying large online platforms must detect standards-compliant provenance data, disclose its availability and specified authenticity information through a user interface, permit users to inspect available system provenance data, and, to the extent technically feasible, refrain from knowingly stripping compliant system provenance data or digital signatures. On the same date, GenAI hosting platforms may not knowingly make available systems that fail to place the disclosures required by Section 22757.3. Beginning January 1, 2028, capture-device manufacturers must offer and enable by default specified latent disclosures for covered devices first produced for sale in California on or after that date, subject to technical-feasibility and standards-compliance conditions.

Companies should stop relying on any summary that still says the whole law simply took effect on January 1, 2026. That is outdated. Companies that are not yet directly covered by the August 2026 provider duties may still be moving into the law's later phases. If they wait until late 2026 or late 2027 to think seriously about provenance, labeling, or product controls, they are likely already behind.

The Real Compliance Work Is Technical And Procedural

The practical challenge here is not writing one good disclosure sentence.

It is proving that the right information survives the actual distribution path.

Companies should be asking questions like these now:

• Which systems generate image, video, or audio outputs that may fall inside the statute?
• What provenance or metadata is currently attached to those outputs?
• Does that data survive export, reposting, resizing, transcoding, or partner distribution?
• Can the company actually detect its own output reliably through a free user-facing tool?
• If the system is licensed out, where is the contractual requirement preserving latent disclosure capability?
• What happens when a downstream user strips, breaks, or disables provenance markers?

Those are engineering, product, legal, and vendor-management questions at the same time.

That is also why this law matters. It forces a more operational version of AI transparency than a lot of commentary admits.

What Records Companies Should Keep

The statute does not prescribe a general recordkeeping program. As a compliance and defensibility measure, however, a company that may be covered now or later should document its scope analysis and implementation work.

At a minimum, that record should include:

• system inventory for covered media-generation tools;
• monthly-visitor-or-user basis for any threshold analysis;
• detection-tool design and testing records;
• provenance and disclosure specifications;
• documentation showing whether manifest and latent disclosures are technically feasible in each workflow;
• API availability and user-access controls for the detection tool;
• contract terms for licensed systems;
• incident or exception handling when provenance is stripped, broken, or unavailable; and
• decision logs for scope calls, especially where the company concluded a system or workflow was outside the statute.

That kind of documentation matters because California's law is enforceable through civil actions, even though the statute does not itself create a general recordkeeping section.

The Penalty Structure Should Get Attention

The statute authorizes a civil penalty of $5,000 per violation, enforceable by the Attorney General, a city attorney, or a county counsel. Each day of noncompliance is a discrete violation for a covered provider, large online platform, or capture-device manufacturer. The statute separately provides an injunctive remedy and fees and costs for a third-party licensee's failure to cease using a revoked system.

That does not automatically mean immediate aggressive enforcement. It does mean the law should not be treated as symbolic.

The per-day structure is exactly the kind of thing that makes delayed operational fixes more expensive later.

What Companies Should Do Now

The short version is simple.

If you are clearly a covered provider, this should already be implementation and validation work.

If you are more likely to be affected by the January 2027 or January 2028 phases, use the current window to map systems, test provenance behavior, and clean up any workflow that assumes transparency can be bolted on at the last minute.

The best immediate steps are:

1. Identify which products and workflows generate image, video, or audio content that may be covered.
2. Confirm whether any system crosses the current monthly-user threshold.
3. Test whether provenance data survives the real channels where content is shared.
4. Review whether a free user-facing detection tool and API are actually ready.
5. Check license agreements and downstream controls for any third-party distribution of the system.
6. Build a written record of scope, exceptions, testing, and fixes.

Bottom Line

As of August 2, 2026, the covered-provider provisions are operative and should be treated as current compliance requirements.

The deeper point is that this statute is not mainly about slogans like "AI-generated content should be labeled." It is about whether a company can produce working detection tools, persistent provenance, durable disclosures, and defensible records across real content workflows.

That is where the compliance work actually is.

Sources

• California SB 942 bill text
• California AB 853 bill status
• California AB 853 bill text
• Clearon Laws, Bills & Regulations tracker

Minnesota's new nudification law is already in court.

That matters because the statute is broader than a simple downstream ban on abusive deepfake distribution. It targets covered nudification services at the tool layer, reaches realistic depictions of intimate parts not shown in the original image or video, and uses a liability structure that puts real pressure on the companies that build or offer those services.

The immediate headline is simple. xAI sued to block the law. The court refused to stop it on an emergency basis. So Minnesota's Chapter 72 is now live while the constitutional fight continues.

That is enough to make this one of the clearest current test cases for how far a state can go when it tries to impose liability on AI-enabled image tools themselves.

What Minnesota Actually Enacted

Minnesota's enacted law is Chapter 72, drawn from H.F. 1606.

The core operative section is new Minnesota Statutes 325E.91, titled PROHIBITION ON NUDIFICATION TECHNOLOGY.

The law defines "nudify" in a specific way. It covers altered or generated images or video that depict an intimate part not shown in the original image or video of an identifiable individual, where the result is realistic enough that a reasonable person would believe the intimate part belongs to that person.

That definition matters because the incorporated concept of an "intimate part" is broader than ordinary references to nudity. It reaches areas including the inner thigh, buttocks, groin, and breast. The statute is also not limited by an express consent requirement.

The prohibition is directed at the service layer. Under subdivision 2, a person who owns or controls a service may not:

• allow a user to access, download, or use a website, application, software program, or other service to nudify an image or video; or
• nudify an image or video on behalf of a user.

The statute also bars advertising or promoting a service that performs those actions.

At the same time, the law is not drafted as a universal ban on every image-editing capability that could be abused. Subdivision 3 excludes a service that requires user technical skill to nudify an image or video. That carveout will matter in any fight over how broadly the statute can reach practical product design choices.

That design choice is the important part. Minnesota did not just create a takedown rule or a disclosure rule. It wrote a direct prohibition on covered automated nudification functionality aimed at the service itself.

Why Companies Are Paying Attention

The penalty structure is severe enough to get attention even before any final ruling on the merits.

The law authorizes enforcement by the Minnesota Attorney General under section 8.31. In addition to other remedies, a violator is subject to a civil penalty of up to $500,000 for each unlawful access, download, or use under subdivision 2.

That is a very large number for a statute aimed at a consumer-facing tool category that can generate high-volume activity quickly.

But the Attorney General penalty is only part of the pressure. Subdivision 4 also creates a private cause of action for the depicted individual, including compensatory damages of up to three times actual damages, punitive damages, injunctive relief, costs, attorney fees, and other equitable relief.

The enacted text also routes collected penalties into victim-service funding through the Office of Justice Programs. That feature helps explain the statute's posture. This is being framed not as a labeling problem, but as a victim-protection and platform-liability problem.

The effective-date clause is also direct. Chapter 72 says the section is effective August 1, 2026, and applies to causes of action accruing on or after that date.

What xAI Is Challenging

According to the challenge as described in AP reporting and the emergency litigation, xAI does not deny the state's interest in addressing synthetic sexual abuse.

Its argument is narrower and more structural. The company says the law reaches too far, lacks a safe-harbor path for companies making good-faith efforts to block misuse, and sweeps in protected material because of how it defines the prohibited conduct.

That overbreadth framing matters because the challenge is not only about sexual deepfakes in the colloquial sense. xAI argues the statute lacks limiting elements such as consent, scienter, and purpose requirements, and can reach realistic altered imagery that is nonsexual, consensual, or otherwise protected.

That is a familiar pattern in AI litigation. The company is not arguing that the underlying harm is fake. It is arguing that the state's chosen regulatory mechanism is overbroad.

For Minnesota, the important point is that this challenge is not mainly about disclosure, watermarking, or post hoc removal. It is about whether a state can prohibit covered nudification functionality and tie that prohibition to very large per-use penalties and private civil exposure.

The First Court Ruling Matters, But Only In A Limited Way

The court has already made one important move, but it is easy to overread it.

In the July 31, 2026 order cited above, the District of Minnesota denied xAI's request for a temporary restraining order before the law took effect. The order emphasized timing. The court noted that xAI filed its emergency motion on July 29, nearly three months after the law was signed and only three days before the effective date. The court said that delay suggested the harm was not immediate.

That is a procedural loss, not a final merits ruling that the statute is constitutional.

Still, it matters in practice. It means Minnesota's law took effect while the litigation continues. It also means challengers to new AI laws can lose early if they wait too long to seek emergency relief, even when the underlying constitutional arguments remain open.

The same order also moved the case onto an expedited preliminary-injunction track, with Minnesota's opposition due August 12, xAI's reply due August 17, and a hearing set for August 19. So the procedural story is no longer just a TRO denial. The case is already in active merits-stage briefing over whether Chapter 72 can stay in force while the lawsuit proceeds.

Why This Case Matters Beyond Minnesota

This dispute deserves attention because it regulates a different part of the stack than many earlier AI laws.

Some AI statutes focus on disclosures. Others focus on impersonation or downstream misuse. Minnesota's nudification law is more direct about restricting access to covered nudification services themselves.

That makes the case useful for companies that operate image-generation, editing, or transformation systems, even if they do not market them for sexualized use.

The practical questions are concrete:

• How much misuse prevention is enough if a statute has no explicit safe harbor?
• How broadly can a state define a prohibited nudification category before ordinary editing, consensual uses, or protected depictions start to matter?
• When a law imposes penalties per access, download, or use, how does a court think about scale?
• Does the state's interest in preventing deepfake sexual abuse justify tool-level restrictions that go beyond after-the-fact takedown or civil remedies against users?

Minnesota has put those questions into a live case.

What Companies Should Do Now

Companies offering image-generation or image-editing features should not treat this as a Minnesota-only oddity.

Even if other states do not copy this exact statute, the enforcement logic is now visible. A state can try to move upstream from punishing bad actors to restricting covered automated functionality that can be used to generate abusive synthetic intimate imagery.

That means product teams should be reviewing:

• whether any feature can realistically be used to create realistic altered depictions of intimate parts of real people;
• what safeguards exist before image generation, editing, export, and sharing;
• whether abuse-prevention controls, product boundaries, and escalation rules are documented clearly enough to support a regulator, court, or internal response;
• whether the company has a defensible position on minors, consent, identity, and realistic depictions; and
• how quickly the company could respond if another state adopts a tool-access model instead of a narrower misuse model.

The legal issue here is not only whether a bad image can be removed later. It is whether a covered service can be offered in its current form under a state law aimed at the tool itself.

Bottom Line

Minnesota's Chapter 72 is one of the clearest new examples of a state trying to regulate AI-enabled synthetic intimate imagery at the platform-access level, not just at the takedown level.

xAI's early loss on emergency relief does not resolve the constitutional merits. But it does mean the law is in force while the fight continues.

That is enough to make this case worth close attention. If Minnesota's model survives, it may become a template for other states looking for a more aggressive way to regulate synthetic intimate-imagery tools.

Sources and Related Clearon Coverage

• Minnesota Chapter 72 enacted text
• Minnesota HF 1606 bill text
• District of Minnesota July 31, 2026 order denying temporary restraining order in X.AI LLC v. Ellison
• AP report on xAI's challenge to Minnesota's nudification law
• TechCrunch report on denial of xAI's request to block the law

Kohls v. Ellison Did Not End Minnesota's Election AI Law Fight on the Merits

Minnesota is easy to misread if you look only at the result.

The challengers in Kohls v. Ellison did not win preliminary relief against Minnesota's election deepfake statute. The Eighth Circuit affirmed the district court, and rehearing was later denied.

That can sound like a clean appellate approval of the law. It was not.

The more careful description is that the Eighth Circuit affirmed without resolving the underlying constitutional merits of the statute itself. That makes Minnesota an important but limited precedent in the growing fight over election-related AI laws.

The statute sits in the same field, but the case is different

The operative law is Minn. Stat. § 609.771, titled "Use of deep fake technology to influence an election."

Minnesota therefore belongs in the same general field as California, Hawaii, New Mexico, Arizona, and other states regulating synthetic election media in some form. But its litigation story is procedurally different from the Babylon Bee cases.

That difference is the whole point.

What happened on appeal

The Eighth Circuit appeal in No. 25-1300 came from the district court's denial of preliminary relief.

The appellate docket shows that judgment was entered on February 9, 2026, affirming in accordance with the panel opinion. Later entries show that the appellants sought rehearing and rehearing en banc, and that both requests were denied on March 31, 2026.

That gives Minnesota a firmer appellate procedural history than some other election-AI cases now cited around the country. But it does not mean the Eighth Circuit gave the statute a sweeping constitutional endorsement.

Why the merits limitation matters

The best way to describe Minnesota's significance is narrow.

A lot of commentary collapses "the plaintiffs lost the injunction appeal" into "the law was upheld." Those are not always the same thing. A court can deny preliminary relief without giving the state a full merits victory on the substance of the First Amendment challenge.

That is what makes Minnesota useful but incomplete as precedent.

What Minnesota does tell other states

Minnesota still carries real lessons.

First, plaintiff-specific delay matters. The Eighth Circuit treated Mary Franson's insufficiently explained sixteen-month delay as fatal to the irreparable-harm showing required for preliminary relief.

Second, standing still does real work in this area. The court held that Christopher Kohls had not established standing on the preliminary-injunction record, while Franson had standing to press her own challenge.

Third, the absence of preliminary merits relief does not eliminate litigation risk for similar statutes elsewhere. It means only that the Minnesota challengers did not obtain the procedural posture they needed.

Why Minnesota still matters for New Mexico and the Bee cases

Minnesota is not a Babylon Bee case, and that distinction matters.

The Bee cases put pressure on satire, parody, and compelled-warning issues in a specific way. Minnesota's appeal posture is most useful for a different lesson: a state can survive the preliminary-injunction stage without obtaining a full appellate ruling that its law is constitutional.

So if the point is that challengers can lose early because one plaintiff lacked standing and another waited too long to show urgency, Minnesota helps. If the point is that an appellate court has already blessed the constitutional merits of a state election-AI law, Minnesota does not support that proposition.

Bottom line

Kohls v. Ellison did not end Minnesota's election-AI fight with a sweeping merits decision.

What it shows instead is how much election-law procedure can shape outcomes. The Eighth Circuit affirmed the denial of preliminary relief, rehearing was denied, and the district case remained alive afterward.

The cleaner takeaway is narrower but still important: Minnesota shows that a state can survive an early challenge without receiving a full appellate ruling on whether its election-AI law ultimately survives First Amendment scrutiny.

This article summarizes a pending election-law challenge and related procedural rulings. It does not provide legal advice.

Babylon Bee v. Bonta Shows Why California's Election AI Laws Cannot Be Treated as One Thing

California is still the most useful comparison state for the New Mexico Babylon Bee case. But it only helps if it is described carefully.

Too much commentary treats California's election-AI fight as though one law did all the work. That is not the cleanest way to understand the dispute. California enacted two related 2024 measures, and they do not handle platform duties, satire, parody, and compelled treatment of election content in the same way.

That distinction matters because Babylon Bee v. Bonta is not just a story about whether California may regulate deceptive election media. It is also a story about how statutory design changes the constitutional analysis.

California enacted two different measures

The relevant California measures are AB 2655 and AB 2839.

AB 2655, chaptered as Chapter 261 on September 17, 2024, added Elections Code provisions beginning at Section 20510 under the "Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act of 2024" and took effect on January 1, 2025.

AB 2839, chaptered the same day as Chapter 262, added Elections Code Section 20012 and took effect immediately as an urgency measure. Its legislative topic line is "Elections: deceptive media in advertisements."

That is the first point lawyers should keep straight. California did not enact one broad election-AI law. It enacted at least two separate measures in the same policy lane, with different structures and different constitutional pressure points.

The litigation split mattered too

The Bee plaintiffs sought immediate preliminary relief against AB 2839 in October 2024. California officials later agreed the statute could not be enforced against ADF's clients after the court in Kohls v. Bonta concluded it likely violated the First Amendment.

The bigger district-court turning points came in August 2025, and they were not the same ruling.

On August 20, 2025, the court entered final judgment and a permanent injunction as applied to X and Rumble as to AB 2655 on Section 230 preemption grounds. A later stipulation and order extended non-enforcement protection to other providers of interactive computer services, unless that judgment is vacated on appeal.

On August 29, 2025, the court granted summary judgment and permanently enjoined enforcement of AB 2839 against the named plaintiffs on First Amendment grounds.

That distinction matters because AB 2655 did not fall on a single broad holding that every part of it was unconstitutional. The platform-duty regime was treated as preempted by the Communications Decency Act, while the AB 2839 ruling squarely addressed the First Amendment.

Why the statutory split matters

California is a bad comparison state if it is used sloppily.

AB 2655 is the platform-duty statute in the California pair, even though it also contains an express satire/parody exemption. AB 2839 is the more direct speaker-and-distributor statute, and its treatment of satire and parody still turns on disclosure mechanics.

That difference matters because a court may respond differently to a large-platform removal and labeling regime than to a law that directly regulates political speakers and distributors.

California's litigation value is not just that "California lost." Its value is that the case shows how much constitutional weight can turn on the exact way a legislature writes a synthetic-media rule.

Why California still matters for New Mexico

New Mexico's case is narrower than the full California fight, but California remains the nearest high-profile comparison.

The Bee's New Mexico complaint is mainly aimed at the year-round advertisement-disclaimer regime in HB 182, not every part of the statute's separate ninety-day prohibition structure. That makes California especially relevant because California's dispute also placed heavy pressure on election-related speech rules touching political memes, parody, and compelled treatment of synthetic media.

California therefore supplies at least three useful questions for New Mexico:

1. How closely will a court read the exact statutory text instead of the state's general anti-deception rationale?
2. Will the court treat satire and parody as clearly protected in practice, not just in theory?
3. When a law forces labels, removals, or other compelled treatment of political content, how much tailoring is enough?

What California does not prove

California should not be overstated.

The district-court result does not automatically decide what happens in New Mexico or elsewhere. California sits in the Ninth Circuit. New Mexico sits in the Tenth. The statutes are not identical, and neither is the procedural posture.

California also does not prove that every election-related AI disclosure statute is unconstitutional. What it shows is narrower and more useful: courts can treat these laws as serious burdens when they impose platform duties, compelled labels, or other direct treatment of political satire and parody.

Bottom line

Babylon Bee v. Bonta matters because California's election-AI laws cannot be analyzed as one undifferentiated package.

The state enacted AB 2655 and AB 2839 as separate measures. The litigation then turned California into the clearest live example of how statutory design, platform duties, satire treatment, and compelled-speech problems can collide in this area.

For lawyers watching New Mexico and other state election-AI fights, California is still the comparison state that deserves the closest reading. It just should not be flattened into a one-law story.

This article summarizes enacted California measures and related litigation materials. It does not provide legal advice.

Selected US State AI Election Law Comparison: A Working Memo on Enacted Laws, Disclaimers, Satire, and Litigation

This is a selected-state comparison memo, not a final 50-state survey.

As of June 23, 2026, the National Conference of State Legislatures said 31 states had enacted some form of election-related AI or synthetic-media law. That NCSL count is the baseline. This article reviews a smaller enacted subset closely enough to compare the main statutory models and the litigation issues now surfacing in the New Mexico, California, Hawaii, and Minnesota disputes.

That distinction matters. The article is meant to clarify the main models in the field, not to claim that only a handful of states have acted.

1. Start with enacted laws, not just litigated laws

The enacted-law field is broader than the states already in court.

From the materials verified for this memo, the enacted set clearly includes at least Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Utah, and Wisconsin, alongside other states included in the NCSL total.

That means New Mexico is not operating in a narrow outlier group. It is part of a substantial and still-growing state-law field.

2. One common model is disclosure

Under the disclosure model, a state permits election-related synthetic media at least in some circumstances but requires the speaker to add a warning or disclosure. The trigger often turns on timing, medium, or whether the content depicts a candidate or ballot issue.

The directly verified examples reviewed for this memo include:

• Colorado: candidate-election deepfake disclosures with enforcement and private-cause-of-action features.
• Florida: disclaimers for certain political advertisements, electioneering communications, and related ads that use AI.
• Indiana: disclaimer requirement when campaign communication includes fabricated media depicting a candidate.
• New York: political communications using materially deceptive media must carry the statute's disclosure language.
• Oregon: campaign communications using synthetic media must say the content has been manipulated.
• Utah: synthetic audio and visual election communications must carry prescribed words.
• Wisconsin: AI-generated audio or video political ads require disclosure.

Some statutes sit near the line because they use prohibition language while also tying lawful distribution or exceptions from liability to disclosure mechanics. That overlap matters because it shows why simple labels can hide meaningful structural differences.

3. Another model is prohibition plus disclosure or safe harbor

A second model uses prohibition language aimed at deceptive or materially deceptive election media, often with a disclosure safe harbor or adjacent exception. These are not pure bans in the ordinary sense. They are hybrid statutes.

The verified examples reviewed for this memo include:

• Alabama: makes certain materially deceptive election communications criminal when distributed to influence an election, subject to statutory exceptions.
• Arizona: bars deceptive synthetic media close to an election unless the required disclosure is included.
• Hawaii: reaches reckless distribution of materially deceptive media in candidate elections, subject to listed exclusions and defenses.
• New Mexico: uses a ninety-day rule tied to knowledge, intent to mislead voters, and likelihood of that result, with a disclaimer safe harbor.

This is where precision matters for New Mexico. Section 1-19-26.8 is the ninety-day prohibition provision. The Bee's complaint, however, principally challenges the separate year-round advertisement-disclaimer provisions in Section 1-19-26.4.

4. Satire and parody are the real fault line

Satire and parody are the hardest comparison point because state laws handle them in very different ways.

The safest framework is to separate three possibilities:

• Express carveout: the statute excludes satire or parody from the operative restriction.
• Conditional carveout: the statute mentions satire or parody but still conditions lawful use on a disclaimer or other required treatment.
• No clear carveout: the statute does not clearly spare satire or parody, or the exception is too uncertain to summarize confidently from the available text.

Arizona belongs in the express-carveout bucket. Colorado, New York, and Oregon also use express satire/parody exclusions in the enacted measures cited for this memo.

California should not be treated as a single blended model. Enacted AB 2655 contains an express satire/parody exemption, while enacted AB 2839 uses a disclosure-conditioned exception that still ties lawful use to label mechanics.

New Mexico fits the conditional-carveout bucket for purposes of the Bee's complaint because the Bee argues the statute does not truly exempt satire and parody from the challenged ad-disclaimer rule.

Hawaii is different again. In The Babylon Bee v. Lopez, the district court concluded the law lacked an explicit or implicit satire/parody exception sufficient to save it.

That is why Arizona, California, Hawaii, and New Mexico are useful comparison points. They do not use the same carveout model.

5. The litigation cluster still centers on four states

As of August 12, 2026, the clearest litigation cluster remains:

• California: AB 2839 and related AB 2655 litigation, with district-court summary-judgment and permanent-injunction relief on key claims and an active Ninth Circuit appeal.
• Hawaii: Act 191 / S 2687, where the district court entered a permanent injunction and the case later closed without an appeal after a fee settlement.
• Minnesota: Minn. Stat. § 609.771, where the district court denied preliminary relief and the Eighth Circuit affirmed that denial without reaching the constitutional merits, relying on standing and delay.
• New Mexico: HB 182, with the Bee's complaint filed on August 11, 2026.

Litigation status is useful, but it is not a complete proxy for statutory strength. Some laws remain untested because no plaintiff has brought the right case yet.

Working takeaways

Several points are already clear.

First, election-related AI laws are now common enough that New Mexico cannot be treated as a one-off.

Second, the most important split is not disclosure versus prohibition in the abstract. Many states combine both techniques.

Third, the key pressure point in the Bee cases is how a statute treats satire and parody. That is where Arizona, California, Hawaii, and New Mexico become especially useful comparison states.

Fourth, New Mexico's lawsuit should be described carefully. The Bee is not challenging every moving part of HB 182. The complaint is aimed mainly at the year-round advertisement-disclaimer regime, while the statute separately contains a ninety-day prohibition rule.

Bottom line

New Mexico sits inside a larger and still-growing state-law field, even if this article only closely reviews a selected subset.

The most useful comparison question for the current litigation is narrower than a full 50-state inventory. It is whether courts will treat required AI warnings on political satire as a permissible election safeguard or as an unconstitutional burden on protected speech.

This article is a selected-state comparison memo based on enacted statutes and current litigation materials. It does not provide legal advice.

Babylon Bee's New Mexico Lawsuit Tests the State's AI Ad Disclaimer Rule

The Babylon Bee has opened another front in the fight over state election-deepfake laws, this time in New Mexico.

On August 11, 2026, the Bee sued members of the New Mexico State Ethics Commission in federal court. The case is The Babylon Bee, LLC v. Castillo, No. 1:26-cv-02628, in the District of New Mexico.

The complaint does not attack every part of HB 182. Its main target is the law's year-round disclaimer regime for certain covered political advertisements. The Bee argues that those provisions force protected satire and parody to carry a government-prescribed AI warning.

That framing matters because New Mexico's statute has more than one moving part, and the lawsuit is aimed chiefly at one of them.

What New Mexico's law does

New Mexico's 2024 HB 182 amended the Campaign Reporting Act in two different ways relevant here.

First, Section 1-19-26.4 imposes disclaimer rules on certain election-related advertisements containing materially deceptive media. The required disclaimer format varies by image, video, audio, or mixed media.

Second, Section 1-19-26.8 creates a separate ninety-day prohibition. It makes it unlawful to distribute materially deceptive media when the speaker knows the media falsely represents the depicted individual, distributes it within ninety days before an election, intends to alter voting behavior by misleading voters, and the distribution is reasonably likely to do so. That provision includes its own disclaimer safe harbor and criminal penalties for willful and knowing violations.

Those sections are related, but they are not interchangeable. The Bee's complaint is principally aimed at the advertisement-disclaimer provisions, not the separate ninety-day prohibition.

HB 182 defines "materially deceptive media" as image, video, or audio that depicts an individual engaged in speech or conduct in which the person did not engage, was publicly distributed without the depicted individual's consent, and was produced in whole or in part using artificial intelligence.

Why the Bee says the law is unconstitutional

The Bee does not frame the case as a defense of deceptive campaign tricks in general. The complaint alleges compelled speech, overbreadth, vagueness, and content-, viewpoint-, and speaker-based discrimination, both facially and as applied.

The core theory is that satire, parody, cartoons, and memes often rely on exaggeration, inversion, and literal falsity to make a political point. The Bee says forcing a prescribed AI disclaimer onto that type of expression alters the message and undercuts the joke.

The complaint also emphasizes that New Mexico did not exempt satire and parody from the challenged disclaimer requirement. It distinguishes between the statute's exclusion for news stories or editorials from the definition of "advertisement" and a separate safe harbor for broadcasters carrying covered material during bona fide news programming.

Why California and Hawaii matter

The New Mexico case fits a growing pattern of First Amendment challenges to state election-synthetic-media laws.

In California, the Bee and related plaintiffs obtained district-court relief against AB 2839, the state's deceptive-media-in-advertisements law. That ruling is part of the larger Babylon Bee v. Bonta litigation, and the California appeal remains active in the Ninth Circuit.

In Hawaii, the Bee won a permanent injunction against Act 191 in The Babylon Bee v. Lopez. The district court enjoined enforcement in January 2026, and the case later ended without an appeal after a fee settlement.

Those rulings do not control a federal court in New Mexico. They do, however, show that courts have already treated some state election-synthetic-media laws as serious First Amendment problems when the rules reach political satire or impose broad compelled disclosures.

Why this case matters beyond the Bee

As of June 23, 2026, the National Conference of State Legislatures said 31 states had enacted some form of election-related AI or synthetic-media law. The policy trend is real.

The harder question is how far states may go when regulating content that includes protected political expression, including parody, caricature, ridicule, and political memes.

That is why the New Mexico case matters beyond one plaintiff. It puts pressure on a common legislative strategy: permit the speech but require a disclosure label when the content falls within the statute's definition of materially deceptive media.

What to watch next

Three issues are likely to matter most.

First, how tightly the court defines the challenged provisions. The case may turn less on the broad idea of election deepfakes and more on whether New Mexico can apply its ad-disclaimer rule to satire and parody.

Second, whether the state can meaningfully distinguish its statute from the California and Hawaii laws. The text differences matter, and so does the separation between New Mexico's ad-disclaimer regime and its ninety-day prohibition.

Third, how the court treats the relationship between satire and deception. The Bee's position is that protected satire can depict events that did not happen while still conveying an obvious political message in context. New Mexico will likely argue that the statute targets voter deception, not humor as such.

Bottom line

This case chiefly concerns HB 182's advertisement-disclaimer regime, not every part of the law or its separate ninety-day prohibition.

Its broader significance is where courts draw the constitutional line when election-AI disclosure rules reach protected satire and parody.

This article summarizes a newly filed federal complaint and related constitutional issues. It does not provide legal advice.

Seventh Circuit Says Citation Verification Is Not Just the Filer's Problem

The Seventh Circuit added an important wrinkle to the growing line of AI-citation cases. The filing lawyer still owns the duty to verify authorities and quotations. But the court also suggested that opposing counsel may face criticism for failing to identify serious citation defects and bring them to the court's attention.

That is the practical lesson from Dec v. Mullin, a March 30, 2026 immigration decision. The underlying appeal was not about AI. The warning came from the briefing.

Petitioner's counsel cited two nonexistent cases and included a false quotation in the standard-of-review section. At oral argument, counsel denied using AI. A later letter said she had presumably copied and pasted the language from another brief she could not locate and had failed to verify the citations.

The Seventh Circuit admonished counsel but stopped short of stronger sanctions. The court emphasized that the errors appeared unintentional, counsel was contrite, and the fabricated authorities were used to support an undisputed legal standard rather than a contested merits issue.

The more interesting point was about the other side

The court repeated the familiar rule that trained lawyers must verify the citations and quotations in their own filings. But it then added that opposing counsel's failure to catch the defects and bring them to the court's attention also gave it pause, even if to a lesser degree.

That is not the same thing as announcing a free-standing duty to audit every sentence in an adversary's brief. The panel did not create such a rule. Still, the signal is clear. When serious authority defects are discovered, courts may expect someone on the other side to raise the problem rather than let it slide.

Why this matters

Most sanctions coverage still focuses on the lawyer who filed the defective brief. That remains the main risk, and Dec does not change it.

What the case adds is a response-side lesson. Citation verification is not just a filing control. It is also part of litigation hygiene once the defect is visible.

If opposing counsel discovers a nonexistent case, a quotation that does not appear in the source, or a proposition that does not match the cited authority, waiting until oral argument or final disposition may not be the safest choice. The better course may be to raise it promptly through a procedurally appropriate channel.

That framing fits the broader case pattern. In United States v. Farris, the Sixth Circuit focused on the filing lawyer's failure to verify quotations and case descriptions generated through Westlaw CoCounsel. In Lnu v. Blanche, the Ninth Circuit treated candor after discovery of the error as a major part of the discipline analysis. Dec does not conflict with those cases. It rounds them out.

A better litigation response pattern

Law firms do not need a broad new doctrine to act on this. They need a cleaner escalation rule.

When an adversary filing appears to contain fabricated or materially inaccurate authority, teams should:

• verify the cited source directly before making the accusation;
• preserve the defective language and the source comparison;
• decide quickly whether the issue should be raised through a letter, motion, meet-and-confer process, or the next scheduled hearing;
• avoid overclaiming if the problem is sloppiness rather than fabrication; and
• treat the issue as a filing-integrity problem, not a chance for rhetorical theater.

Bottom line

Dec v. Mullin does not create a formal duty to re-edit the other side's brief. It does something more practical. It suggests that when serious authority defects are discovered, courts may expect somebody on the other side to say so.

The filing lawyer still has the primary burden. But the safest appellate posture now looks broader than that: verify your own filing, and if the other side's filing contains serious authority defects, do not assume the court will be impressed if nobody raises them.

This article summarizes a published appellate decision and related litigation-risk implications. It does not provide legal advice.