Port : Our speech laws arent ready for the AI era

grandforksherald.com · Feb 18, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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MINOT — In June 2024, as North Dakotans were headed to cast their ballots in that year's primary election, mysterious text messages began appearing on phones falsely claiming that U.S. House candidate Julie Fedorchak had withdrawn from the race. The text included excerpts from real news media reports, including video of a TV interview, deceptively edited to back up that bogus assertion. At least some of the texts came from the same phone numbers previously used to send texts promoting one of her opponents, Rick Becker, though he has denied any knowledge of the deceitful messages. Ultimately, the texts had little impact — Fedorchak cruised to an easy victory in the five-way race — but to this day there's been no accountability for those who sent them. Fedorchak's campaign filed a complaint with federal authorities. According to Sean Cleary, her campaign manager that cycle, it ultimately came to nothing.That episode is worth keeping in mind as we consider the lawsuit filed by former lawmaker and political troll Brandon Prichard against North Dakota laws prohibiting false statements in campaign messaging. Prichard argues that these laws, as well as any efforts to enforce them, are an affront to his First Amendment rights.Prichard makes for an ironic plaintiff in that case, given that his frequent claims about attending the University of Minnesota's law school became so obnoxious that the law school itself felt obliged to publicly refute them. Still, his suit brings up a thorny and modern issue. The idea of the government regulating speech should give any patriotic American the hives. No reasonable person wants to enable the dissemination of falsehoods, but the problem with making false political speech illegal is who gets to decide what's false or not?Would you trust someone appointed by President Donald Trump to decide which claims about the 2020 election are allowable? Are we all comfortable with a Democrat deciding which claims about voter ID laws are allowable?For generations Americans have relied on the counterspeech doctrine, best summed up by former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis's statement that the "best solution for speech is more speech." This approach assumes that in an open debate, truthful and better arguments will eventually prevail over the lies.But what if malefactors — from trolls playing in the puddles of local politics to nation states waging propaganda wars against their enemies — can overwhelm the truth with a fire hose of falsehoods? Laws against false political speech, such as those Prichard is challenging, aren't frequently enforced. For the most part, we leave it to the public to decide for themselves what's false and what's not, and in the past that's probably been a sufficient remedy. But now? It's never been easier to promote lies. Most Americans are getting their news filtered through the various algorithms of social media, and artificial intelligence has enabled the cheap wholesale manufacture of amazingly realistic images, video and audio. This is the reality we're living with.Prichard's lawsuit may very well result in the courts striking down North Dakota's laws governing political speech. Whether that happens or not, we need to consider if our laws are sufficient for an era where any schmoe with an internet connection can manufacture sophisticated and convincing text, images, audio and video to promote their lies. Rob Port is a news reporter, columnist, and podcast host for the Forum News Service with an extensive background in investigations and public records. He covers politics and government in North Dakota and the upper Midwest. Reach him at rport@forumcomm.com. Click here to subscribe to his Plain Talk podcast.