The Swifties' Legislative Agenda: Ticket Sales and Deepfakes

The Kansas City Chiefs are heading to the Super Bowl, which means that 2023’s Person of the Year will be in the spotlight for the big game. Unexpectedly, Taylor Swift and her fans are also driving the agenda in many state legislatures this year. Lawmakers are taking inspiration from the superstar on two legislative issues: regulating ticket sellers and AI-generated deepfake media. 

The first issue originates from the astronomically high demand for tickets to the star’s Eras Tour. Scalpers used bots to buy up tickets the second they went on sale, crashing ticket services, and allowing the resellers to make huge profits from the demand. In response, lawmakers in nearly a dozen states introduced legislation to combat the issue. Washington Rep. Kristine Reeves (D) introduced the “Ticket Sales Warrant Integrity, Fairness, and Transparency for Consumer Protection Act” (TSWIFT Consumer Protection Act), which would license ticket sellers and resellers, require price disclosures, and prohibit electronic delivery fees and dynamic pricing. Rep. Reeves told a legislative committee, “I committed to my constituents and the community that I would not shake it off and that we would continue to do this work until we’re able to resolve ticket sales in Washington.”

The second issue was something already on lawmakers' radar but that was punctuated last week after AI-generated, sexualized deepfake images depicting Taylor Swift quickly spread throughout social media before fans and content moderators were able to mount a counter-offensive to take down the images. Artificial intelligence is a major trend lawmakers will address in 2024, and nine states have already enacted laws explicitly aimed at stopping the creation and spread of nonconsensual sexual deepfakes. Most states already have statutes prohibiting the sale or distribution of nonconsensual pornographic images, which lawmakers can amend to explicitly include deepfakes. Currently, we’re tracking 55 bills related to sexual deepfakes in 23 states in this year’s legislative sessions. These bills were already a priority for lawmakers (with legislation in Indiana, South Dakota, and Utah quickly passing their chamber of origin), but with last week’s incident catapulting sexual deepfakes into the public consciousness, we expect this issue to become even more of a concern for lawmakers. 

State lawmakers often take inspiration for legislation from the headlines and popular figures, so it’s not surprising that the country’s biggest superstar has put a spotlight on a handful of legislative issues in the states.