Sen. Gounardes’ Stop Deepfakes Act Passes State Senate
Bill requires AI-generated content to be clearly identified online
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: JUNE 4, 2026
New York State Senator Andrew Gounardes issued the following statement after his Stop Deepfakes Act passed the New York State Senate:
“Nearly everyone using the internet lately has looked at an image and asked themselves: is that real? Or is it AI? With my bill, we can ask the image itself.
“From Senators to princesses to schoolkids, more people are falling victim to deepfakes and other misleading AI content. The risks are much bigger than memes: AI content can be used to perpetuate fraud, spread disinformation, create non-consensual pornographic material, and even serve as a geopolitical weapon.
“My Stop Deepfakes Act requires that all AI content include metadata identifying its origins. It’s a simple, easy-to-follow rule, and it creates a clear standard that keeps internet users informed and protects creators’ rights. It’s exactly the type of safeguard we need to ensure the brighter future AI has the potential to offer. To achieve that future, we need to act: the risk of doing nothing is clearer than a digitally-altered image of a sunny day.”
Background:
The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence has made it increasingly difficult for consumers to distinguish between human-created and AI-generated content, raising concerns about misinformation, manipulation, and the erosion of trust in digital media.
The Stop Deepfakes Act (S6954B/A6540E) seeks to ensure transparency and accountability in the use of generative AI by requiring the attachment and preservation of metadata by synthetic content creation systems, large public-facing platforms, and state agencies. The Stop Deepfakes Act imposes three requirements: synthetic content creation providers have to attach metadata, large online platforms have to preserve metadata, and state agencies have to attach the data to the extent practicable.
In line with industry best practices, this light-touch bill would help establish clear demarcations between what is real and fake online. The data would be embedded within the content itself, allowing for an icon, tag, or other visible manifestation of provenance data that would come with all AI-generated or -modified content. Such metadata is attached to images, videos, and audio all the time, making this bill minimally burdensome on creators.
By mandating that AI providers include clear provenance data, this bill enables the public to identify the origins and alterations of AI content. The proposal, which has the support of SAG-AFTRA, also helps preserve creative rights and autonomy for artists by making it easier to tell if a work of art was created by a human or a machine. More broadly, the Stop Deepfakes Act can make it easier to vet the authenticity of online media in an era of misinformation and decaying public trust.
Press Contact:
Billy Richling
Communications Director
State Senator Andrew Gounardes
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