The Senate unanimously passed the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits (Defiance) Act, bringing the first of potentially many AI-focused laws one step closer to federal law.
The bipartisan Defiance Act allows victims to sue those who “knowingly produce, distribute, or receive” nonconsensual sexually explicit digital forgeries. Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin and Republican Senator Lindsay Graham introduced it to the session, but Democratic Representative and Co-Leader Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has emerged as the bill’s public face.

“Today marks an important step in the fight to protect survivors of nonconsensual deepfake pornography,” stated Ocasio-Cortez in a statement issued after the Senate hearing. “More than 90% of all deepfake videos are nonconsensual sexually explicit images, with women being targeted nine times out of ten.” The DEFIANCE Act would, for the first time, provide federal safeguards to survivors of nonconsensual deepfake pornography…”
READ MORE: The Battle Against Deepfakes Now Includes Hardware
Ocasio-Cortez has been the subject of numerous synthetic forgeries, as have several of her political colleagues. Just last week, a modified video of Vice President Kamala Harris making a speech that never happened resurfaced on TikTok, garnering millions of views despite being disproved many times in the previous year. Furthermore, new studies from UK watchdogs indicated that online child sexual abuse content has grown online, thanks to digital forgeries made by artificial intelligence.
While the Defiance Act provides a legal remedy for persons identified in deepfakes, many victims continue to aspire for criminal consequences for those who create and distribute non-consensual synthetic forgeries. If such initiatives follow the same legislative road as true nonconsensual pornography (or revenge porn), the outcome may be left to state law. The federal government has yet to introduce criminal culpability for nonconsensual pornography, but has given a civil path, similar to the Defiance Act, through the 2022 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act.

Senator Ted Cruz sponsored the Take It Down Act in June, legislation that seeks to prohibit the publication of both synthetic and genuine non-consensual intimate pictures, as well as impose sanctions on tech companies that fail to delete such information within 48 hours. The White House has taken similar aim at technology companies for their part in the spread of deepfakes.
READ MORE: MrBeast Cautions Fans Not To Fall For His ‘World’s Largest iPhone 15 Giveaway’ Deepfake Hoax
The Defiance Act is still under consideration in the House and will be voted on at a later date.
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