Supporters of a Senate-passed bill that would allow individuals to sue over nonconsensual intimate depictions generated by artificial intelligence urged the House on Thursday to take action on the legislation.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Laurel Lee, R-Fla., held a news conference with reality TV personality and activist Paris Hilton and said that progress is being made in conversations with House leadership.
The bill would also allow for suits for possession or production of deepfake porn if there was also intent to disclose the images. The legislation is known as the Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits, or DEFIANCE Act.
The Senate passed the bill, sponsored by Sen. Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., by unanimous consent last week in the wake of an outcry over AI-generated images, including of women and children, posted on X by the platform’s xAI Grok bot.
Ocasio-Cortez sponsored the House version of the bill, which Lee co-sponsored. They were joined at the event by other co-sponsors, including Reps. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., Nancy Mace, R-S.C., Sarah McBride, D-Del., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, also attended.
“I urge Speaker [Mike] Johnson, which we have had positive and encouraging conversations with, to put this . . . on the floor for a vote as quickly as possible,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Lee also indicated that she believes progress is being made toward House passage. She said she’s confident that “extensive work” has addressed any First Amendment issues with the bill and that it will not run up against protections in the 1996 communications law governing content moderation and user content on the internet.
“It is not a cause of action against a tech company. It does not affect Section 230 liability protections,” Lee said, adding that, “I am very optimistic that we’ll have an opportunity to have this bill hopefully set for consideration in the Judiciary Committee here soon, and then on to the floor of the House.”
A version of the bill also passed the Senate in 2024, but did not receive a vote in the House. Ocasio-Cortez said that there were “real breakthroughs” on the 2024 version of the bill, but that this bill passed the Senate earlier in the Congress, lawmakers will have more time to come to an agreement.
Last year’s law
Ocasio-Cortez said the legislation would build on a law passed last year that made it a federal crime to knowingly publish nonconsensual intimate imagery of other persons, including such imagery generated by AI, known as the Take it Down Act.
“We know that there is more work to be done. It is not enough to take down content. We have to give victims a civil right of action. Take it Down gave us removal . . . DEFIANCE will give us recourse and restitution,” she said.
Lee said that the bill’s 10-year statute of limitations, which wouldn’t start until a person discovered the violation against them or turned 18, would help “victims who might not discover this abuse right away” and that privacy protections in the bill such as allowing victims to use pseudonyms or requiring the redaction of personal information were included so that “survivors are not further traumatized simply for seeking justice.”
Hilton said her own experiences, including the non-consensual release of a “private, intimate video” when she was 19 and a proliferation of “over 100,000” non-consensual AI-generated explicit images of her, inform her support for the bill. She also expressed her hope of protecting her young daughter from harms online.
“This isn’t about just technology. It’s about power. It’s about . . . using someone’s likeness to humiliate, silence, and strip them of their dignity,” Hilton said.
Supporters of the bill were joined by Francesca Mani, a 17-year-old high school student from New Jersey who said she was the victim of AI-generated deepfakes at age 14.
School administrators “told me there couldn’t be any accountability because no laws existed. So I told them, ‘I will bring you a law.’”
Mani lauded the bill’s inclusion of a right to financial damages for victims.
“Building on ‘Take it Down’’s criminal penalties, [the bill] adds consequences that hit where it hurts. If ethics aren’t in your heart, self-preservation should be,” Mani said.
A study released Thursday by the Center for Countering Digital Hate estimated that Grok generated 3 million sexualized images over an 11-day period starting at the end of December and extending into January. CCDH also estimated that more than 23,000 of those images were of children.
In a floor speech ahead of the bill’s Senate passage, Durbin said the bill would give victims of explicit deepfakes “the tools to fight back against those who would exploit them.”
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