AI law and the newsroom, October 22–24: Pennsylvania signs an AI advertising-disclosure law, Meta moves its crawler deadline, and Mississippi tests a deepfake statute

This issue covers 22 to 24 October 2026, the gap since the last one, in three items. Pennsylvania's governor signed a law that puts a disclosure on AI-generated and AI-altered advertising, and the duty starts on 21 December. Meta pushed its new crawling terms back three weeks and left the wording alone. Mississippi's attorney general told a Senate campaign to pull an AI video, under a statute that makes a label a defence.

Three questions run through the items below. What has to be said to the audience when a machine made the picture? What does a newsroom accept by keeping a business page? Which document answers the question, and on what date?

Gov. Josh Shapiro signed Senate Bill 806 on Thursday 22 October 2026, in a batch of 58 bills. 1 The General Assembly's action history records the approval the same day as Act No. 99 of 2026, after the bill passed the Senate 48–2 in June and the House 163–40 on 7 October. 2

The act runs to six sections, and the duty sits in section 4. 3 This is the operative sentence:

The printed page reads differently from the text a machine extracts from it. Between "may not" and "create" sit the words "knowingly, recklessly or willfully", struck through with a ruled line. 3 Software that lifts the text out of the file returns them as though they were law. The Senate deleted them, and Loeb & Loeb, reading the enrolled act on 23 October, says so plainly: the language "was removed on the Senate floor". 4 A member asked on the record why the words had been deleted from an earlier version, and neither chamber put them back. 5

With the knowledge test gone, the risk sits with whoever runs the ad, whatever that advertiser believed. The state has to prove the conduct, and nothing about the state of mind behind it.

The disclosure itself is specified tightly. It must state "that the advertisement contains content that was modified or generated using artificial intelligence". 3 It must appear the first time the synthetic content is shown, in the same medium as that content, and, where technically feasible, be permanent or extraordinarily difficult to remove. 3

"Clear and conspicuous" carries six criteria. 3 A disclosure must be noticeable, readable and audible in its size, colour, contrast, location and duration, and must be presented in the language the consumer uses to interact with the content. 3 An audio version needs volume and cadence enough to be heard; a visual one needs screen time enough to be read; a print one needs type that contrasts with the background. 3

The act leaves three things open.

The first is who counts as an advertiser. Section 3 defines four terms — artificial intelligence, clear and conspicuous, generative artificial intelligence and synthetic content — and never defines "advertiser" or "advertisement". 3 Whether a publisher that runs a client's sponsored post is an advertiser, or only the agency that built it, is a question for the attorney general or one of the 67 district attorneys to answer first.

The second is the trigger. The duty attaches when synthetic content creates a "false consumer perception" about a product's nature, origin or authenticity, and the act does not say false compared with what. 3 One reading requires a label wherever AI depicts a product at all; a narrower one requires the ad to misrepresent the product, which existing false-advertising law already reaches. 4

The third is what the exemptions let through. Evidently fictional content, parody, satire, commentary and criticism are all outside the section, and so is content "limited to text". 3 An ad whose copy a model wrote, with no generated image, audio or video in it, carries no disclosure duty.

Enforcement sits with the attorney general and district attorneys, who may seek an injunction or bring a civil action. 3 A court may impose a civil fine of up to $3,000 and award actual attorney fees and court costs. 3 The act creates no private right of action. 4 Section 4(c) keeps every other remedy alive, so a disclosure does not cure the deception underneath it. 3

Pennsylvania joins New York and California, which took a different route. Those two require disclosure of "synthetic performers", meaning digitally created people; Pennsylvania reaches any synthetic content, but only where it creates the false perception, and applies no knowledge test at all. 4 It also has no exemption for advertising expressive works or for translations, which both of the others provide. 4

The duty begins on 21 December 2026. Section 6 gives the act effect in 60 days, and the governor signed it on 22 October. 3 For a newsroom, the closest exposure runs through the revenue side: a house advertisement for subscriptions with a generated image in it, or branded content a client paid the desk to produce.

On Friday 23 October, Meta moved the start of its updated Commercial Terms and Self-Serve Ad Terms to 20 November, from 30 October. 6 "We are extending the effective date of our updated Commercial Terms and Self-Serve Ad Terms to 20 November to allow more time for us to explain to our partners and stakeholders what's changing and what's not," a Meta spokesperson said. 6

The wording publishers object to is unchanged. A business that uses Meta's advertising tools, a Facebook Page or an Instagram business account grants Meta permission to crawl the domains and pages associated with that account. 7 Meta may then use what it collects to provide, develop, improve, research and maintain its advertising and business products. 7 Using the tools is how a business accepts the terms.

The delay came one day after the News/Media Alliance wrote to Mark Zuckerberg. 8 The alliance, which represents more than 2,000 American publishers, demanded the crawling provision be withdrawn before 30 October. 8 The letter says publishers "cannot practically disallow or block Meta's crawlers without harming their ability to promote content as a business account user", and that the terms would let Meta exploit journalism "without prior permission or fair compensation". 8

Meta has rejected the complaint that the terms hand it an unlimited right to use publishers' content for its AI services. 6 Its spokesperson said the company will explain how it uses web crawlers and will make clear that sites can still signal their preferences in robots.txt. 6

On 24 October, Meta's own preview page still gave 30 October as the effective date. 7 A publisher planning on the 20 November date is relying on a spokesperson's statement, which is how Meta announced the change. 6

The European Commission welcomed the delay the same day. It added that it had sent requests for information to companies that have not yet published summaries about the data used to train their AI models. 6 The Commission did not name the companies. 6

The European Publishers Council, which had asked Brussels and London to suspend the terms, repeated its objection. "Maintaining a business page or advertising a subscription should not confer general rights over a publisher's website and archive," its executive director, Angela Mills Wade, said. 6 "Uses beyond those necessary to provide the specific service requested should require separate, express authorisation from the relevant rightsholder." 6

The terms bind through contract, and no regulator has blocked them. Three weeks changes the calendar. A publisher can keep its page and its ad account and accept the licence when 20 November arrives 7; it can close the accounts before then and lose the distribution it gets from them 8; or it can wait on the complaints already before the Commission and the UK Competition and Markets Authority, neither of which has suspended anything. 6

On Friday 23 October, Mississippi's attorney general, Lynn Fitch, wrote to Scott Colom and his Senate campaign. 9 Colom is the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, and the video at issue went up on 1 October. The 19-second clip shows a woman made to resemble Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith hurrying away from reporters into a car, and both posts carried the caption "Based on a true story". 10

The letter asked for the videos to be removed by 3:00 pm that day, and said the office "may seek an injunction" under section 97-13-47(4) if they stayed up. 11 It also asked the campaign to preserve all records in the matter. 9 Fitch's statement described the ads as appearing to violate the law and drew no conclusion beyond that; nothing has been filed. 10 Colom said he would delete the post rather than have the attorney general spend public money on litigation. 9

The statute behind the letter took effect in 2024. 12 It makes disseminating a "digitization" a crime when four conditions hold together. 12 The person knows the item is a digitization. The dissemination happens within 90 days of an election, without the consent of the person depicted, and with intent to injure the candidate, influence the result or deter anyone from voting. 12 Colom posted the video 33 days before the election on 3 November. 10

Penalties run to five years in prison, a $10,000 fine, or both, where the intent is to incite or cause violence or bodily harm, or to deter voting. 12 A prior conviction under the section within five years draws the same range, and every other case carries up to a year and $5,000. 12 A court asked for an injunction may order the digitization removed from the platforms it ran on. 12 The attorney general, a district attorney, the person depicted, an injured candidate and a political party with a nominee on the ballot can all bring that action. 12

Mississippi has no disclosure mandate for political advertising. What the statute offers is a defence: "clear and prominent language displayed throughout the digitization" telling the viewer that the depicted individual did not engage in the depicted speech or conduct. 12 A campaign can label its way out of a prosecution. The law never requires it to.

Two exemptions in the same section matter more to newsrooms than to the campaign.

The first covers a regularly published newspaper, magazine or other periodical of general circulation, including an internet or electronic publication, that routinely carries news and commentary of general interest. 12 It applies when that outlet publishes the digitization and "clearly states that the election communication, including materially deceptive media, does not accurately represent a ballot issue or candidate". 12 Republishing the video is lawful on condition of that sentence. Print and online outlets qualify; a broadcast station qualifies separately for bona fide newscasts, news interviews, news documentaries and on-the-spot coverage. 12

The second covers paid broadcasting, and it cuts the other way. A station or online platform that is paid to broadcast the same digitization is exempt outright. 12 A paid political advertisement sits outside the section whatever it shows. A news story about the same advertisement sits inside it, and needs the statement to get out.

Satire and parody are also outside the section, and neither word is defined. 12 That is the campaign's stated defence: "Clearly this was parody," Colom said. 9 The state Republican Party pre-empted it in its 22 October letter asking Fitch to act, quoting dictionary definitions of both words and arguing the video carried no wit, irony or humour. 10

The legislature has twice considered requiring an AI label on political advertising. A 2025 bill died, and the 2026 version passed the Senate 52–0 in February before dying in a House committee in March. 10 Mississippi enforces what it has: a criminal statute with a newsroom carve-out and a labelling defence, and an attorney general willing to use it eleven days before an election.

The nearest date is 3 November 2026, when the European Commission's consultation on technology and copyright closes. 13

Two dates follow within a fortnight. The first round of payments in the Bartz v. Anthropic settlement is due on 15 November 14, and Meta's terms take effect on 20 November unless something moves again. 7

Australia's joint select committee reports on 30 November 15, and 2 December brings the AI Act's prohibitions and the Article 50(2) marking duty for systems already on the market. 16

Pennsylvania's duty lands on 21 December, four days before Christmas. 3

Four open matters carry no date. The Commission has welcomed Meta's delay and opened no proceeding against the terms. 6 The Competition and Markets Authority has received complaints about the terms and suspended nothing. 6 New York's Stealth Crawler Prohibition Act and FAIR News Act remain unsigned on Governor Kathy Hochul's desk 17, and no injunction has been sought in Mississippi. 10