U.S. senators have introduced a bill that would criminalize the spread of nonconsensual deepfake porn — in direct response to the sexually explicit AI-generated photos of Taylor Swift that went viral last week. Last week, sexually explicit and abusive fake images of Swift at Kansas City Chiefs football games flooded X (formerly known as Twitter) — racking up tens of millions of views, according to the platform’s metrics. The incident made Swift the most famous victim of deepfake porn to date. The scandal also highlighted how tech platforms and anti-abuse groups struggle to contend with the proliferation of nonconsensual sexual AI images online. According to The Guardian, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators have now introduced a bill to give victims of sexually explicit deepfake images a way to hold their creators and distributors responsible — following the circulation of pornographic AI-made images of Swift on social media. On Tuesday, Senators Dick Durbin, Lindsey Graham, and Josh Hawley introduced the “Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act” otherwise known as the “Defiance Act”. The Bill would allow victims to be able to sue people involved in the creation and distribution of such images if the person knew or recklessly disregarded that the victim did not consent to the material.
The bill would classify such material as a “digital forgery” and create a 10-year statute of limitations. The Images Might Be Fake, But The Harm is Real In the press release accompanying the bill, the senators noted that Swift had recently become a victim of such sexually abusive deepfakes. “This month, fake, sexually explicit images of Taylor Swift that were generated by artificial intelligence swept across social media platforms,” Durbin says in a press release. “Although the imagery may be fake, the harm to the victims from the distribution of sexually explicit ‘deepfakes’ is very real.” “Nobody — neither celebrities nor ordinary Americans — should ever have to find themselves featured in AI pornography,” Hawley adds. “Innocent people have a right to defend their reputations and hold perpetrators accountable in court. This bill will make that a reality.” After AI-generated pornographic images of Swift spread on X last week and drew anger from her fans, the social media platform made the decision to temporarily block searches for the singer’s name. However, on Monday evening, X restored users’ ability to search Swift’s name.
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