Experts praise Hawaii’s new laws on abusive use of generative A.I.

News admin July 18, 2026 0 Comments

Experts praise Hawaii’s new laws on abusive use of generative A.I.

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – If a generative artificial intelligence deepfake damages your reputation and is one without your permission, you can now take civil action against the person who made it.

That’s in one of the new laws signed by Gov. Josh Green this week. It prohibits harmful uses of deepfake images or videos and creates ways for victims to be compensated, up to $25,000 for each piece of content.

“Coconut wireless will spread that deepfake — like the deepfake we made with you, with your permission — across the entire island, before you can even put out another word of correcting it,” said A.I. consultant and educator Gabriel Yanagihara, who generated deepfakes of this reporter for an earlier story.

Yanagihara said the state has moved ahead of the federal government in trying to protect people from AI-generated scams.

“We’ve been seeing a lot of scams around deepfakes where people will clone your voice or your image and try to use that to scam you out of money, to defame you, to threaten you, like, ‘ho, I made this deepfake image of you; I’m going to send this to everyone on your LinkedIn unless you send money somewhere,’” he said.

“Is it generated by a computer, or is it generated, say, by Ben Gutierrez? Was ben making his statement, or was it made by a computer that some manipulated what Ben said?,” said Jerry Agrusa, a professor at the U.H. Shidler College of Business.

Agrusa co-authored a research paper on public trust in generative A.I. that was released this week. It found that more than 80% of people surveyed said deepfakes can mislead people or put personal data at risk. Only 54% said deepfakes could be useful; nearly 25% said they weren’t sure.

“Right now we’re always, ‘Is it real, is it now real, where did it come from? And I think that if we can get some form of guardrails, we could get more of the benefits of generative A.I.,” said Agrusa.

The experts say the new laws help, but education will be key as A.I. spread – and improves.

“Just get written citations and written sources. Get permission from people, just like the video you and I got to do,” said Yanagihara. “Have that dialog beforehand, and don’t use the tools in any way that you would Photoshop.”

“Trust is the issue,” said Agrusa. “If we trust what we see as legit, then we’re more likely to use it, and it’s more beneficial.”