Following a wave of AI Taylor Swift porn, US lawmakers have proposed a bill that would allow people to sue those who make non-consensual deepfake porn of their likeness. While deepfake tech has been banned from many places, including Google Collab, it’s still a prominent issue across the web.
The anti-deepfake porn bill has been dubbed the DEFIANCE bill, standing for The Disrupt Explicit Forged Images and Non-Consensual Edits Act. This bill would introduce a civil right of action for explicit “digital forgeries” generated without consent.
Introduced by Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, the DEFIANCE bill would allow victims of AI pornography to sue anyone who has “knowingly produced or possessed” a deepfake image with the intent to spread it online.
Deepfake technology has been used sparingly in entertainment such as Disney’s The Mandalorian, but it’s also been adopted for nefarious means. The technology was used as a political weapon during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and AI voice clones have been used to attempt AI kidnappings.
With the rise of easy-to-use AI apps, deepfake pornography has become far more prominent in recent years. Just last week, large swathes of Taylor Swift AI porn was reported on Elon Musk’s Twitter, leading the platform to ban searches of the iconic pop star on the platform.
Deepfake porn has become a weapon for harassing women online, as well as being used for blackmailing people. Many famous women have had their likenesses forced into explicit content without their consent including actors from Marvel or even politicians such as AOC.
The new anti-deepfake porn bill would make the generation of non-consensual porn via “software, machine learning, artificial intelligence or any other computer generated or technological means” that appear to be “indistinguishable from an authentic depiction of the individual” illegal for the first time.
Importantly, this doesn’t just include modern deepfake content. In fact, via the language of this bill, photoshopped images of people into explicit scenes would also be liable as long as the image looks realistic enough.
Furthermore, this doesn’t outright ban the creation of AI pornography. Those who wish to use their own faces to create explicit content for the purpose of sale or entertainment can do so. It’s only the creation of non-consensual content that’s illegal.