A Marketplace (Failure) of Ideas: Foreign Disinformation Campaigns in an Age of Generative A.I. and a Proportionality Approach to Falsehoods
America’s foreign adversaries continue to employ disinformation and deepfakes—aided by artificial intelligence (“A.I.”)—in furtherance of attempts to undermine U.S. democratic institutions, manipulate global political narratives, and reshape the U.S.-led international order. This Article identifies some of the threats that foreign-based disinformation campaigns present, including the growing concerns of A.I.-based disinformation designed to undermine U.S. democratic institutions. It examines how the current free speech framework, informed by the marketplace theory and a categorical approach to the First Amendment, is unable to adequately address modern disinformation tactics. In response to technological and political developments and the Supreme Court’s rigid categorical approach to speech, this Article makes the case for a reorientation of free speech analysis for foreign-based falsehoods and the adoption of a proportionality approach informed by the First Amendment’s democratic nature.
Author: Michael K. Park
Volume 26, Issue 1