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The state of California will pay $3.85 million to researchers at the University of California, Davis, to develop the nation’s first program to train health care professionals to help their patients reduce firearm-related injury and death, university officials announced Tuesday.

Gov. Gavin Newsom approved the funding on Friday when he signed Assembly Bill 521 . Money will go toward educating a variety of California providers, including practicing physicians, mental health care professionals, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurses, health professions students and other specialists.

Dr. Amy Barnhorst, a UC Davis Health psychiatrist, will oversee the training. She has spent a good deal of her career studying gun violence, suicide and public mental health.

California has become the latest state to ban politically motivated deepfakes amidst growing concern about how the technology could be used to interfere with the 2020 election.

On Thursday, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the AB 730 bill into law, making it illegal to create or distribute deceptively altered videos, audio, or photos of political candidates. Additionally, he signed AB 602, a bill that allows California residents to take legal action against distributors of deepfake pornographic content which distributes their likeness without getting legal consent to do so.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed into law a bill that aims to protect voters and political candidates from deepfakes in time for the 2020 election.

AB 730, written by Assemblyman Marc Berman, D-Palo Alto, prohibits distribution of doctored video or audio of a candidate “with the intent to injure the candidate’s reputation or to deceive a voter into voting for or against the candidate” unless the media is clearly marked as fake.

The new law, signed Thursday, boosts existing law about manipulated photos and would allow candidates to seek injunctive relief and damages if they can prove the deepfakes were distributed with malice.

“In the context of elections, the ability to attribute speech or conduct to a candidate that is false – that never happened – makes deepfake technology a powerful and dangerous new tool in the arsenal of those who want to wage misinformation campaigns to confuse voters,” Berman said in a statement.