The Supreme Court of Russia has concluded its deliberations on the legality of using artificial intelligence in political advertising. The court determined that creating images of people using neural networks for campaign materials is illegal, according to information published in "Vedomosti".
The legal proceedings were initiated by a complaint filed by the Chelyabinsk branch of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF). During the election campaign for the regional legislative assembly, the party released campaign leaflets featuring characters created with AI. The regional electoral commission prohibited the distribution of these materials, stating that current legislation allows only two types of images: a candidate or an "undefined group of people." The generated images did not fall into either of these categories.
CPRF lawyers argued in their cassation appeal that the characters on the leaflet are fictional and have no real-life counterparts. They cited technical flaws in the neural network as an example: the image of a child had six fingers, and the contours of a woman showed noticeable anatomical distortions. However, the Supreme Court did not find these arguments convincing.
The leadership of the CPRF announced its intention to appeal this decision to the Constitutional Court after a thorough analysis of the reasoning behind the verdict.
